


To See the Unseen

by anistarrose



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Ghosts, Mystery, Nightmares, Stangst, two characters untagged because of spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2020-11-23 02:29:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20884673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anistarrose/pseuds/anistarrose
Summary: A tale of old money, occult artifacts, and a man willing to try anything for a chance to see his brother again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A spooky mystery for Halloween! This first chapter is set during the night in which Into the Bunker happens, but as you’ll see, things are going to start to diverge from canon pretty quickly. I'm expecting this to end up as 4 chapters, but that's not set in stone.
> 
> This fic gets a little creepy at points, but if you were alright with everything that happened in the GF canon, there shouldn’t be any triggering stuff. But just in case, there is a warning for dq rxw ri ergb hashulhqfh (caesar ciphered because of spoilers for the end of the first chapter).

The twins had left him a note saying they were out camping with Wendy and Soos, and while Stan had to admit he was a little worried, he forced himself to set those fears aside. With all the possible campsites in Gravity Falls, there was no way he was finding those kids even if he wanted to drag them back inside to safety, anyways. He’d just have to trust Dipper’s promise from yesterday that he wouldn’t go looking for any more trouble.

And besides, it was one of those rare nights on which he could be absolutely _sure_ that no one would catch him sneaking down to the portal, and it would be a waste not to make the most of it. He spent the first half-hour or so of the evening lugging heavy toolboxes and clanking pipes down the steps and loading them into the elevator, and as the sun began to set, he retired to his desk in the basement to leaf through the two new Journals — or rather, Journal 2 and his photocopies of Journal 3.

He’d skimmed them already, and figured out just about everything he needed to know about the portal’s actual operation, but he’d skipped past most of the details of what Ford had actually gotten up to over the years. <strike>Unlike Journal 1, which he’d read and reread until his head ached and his eyes stung, desperate not just for clues but also for even the vaguest semblance of his brother’s companionship…</strike>

He started with Journal 3 but then quickly switched to Journal 2, because Gideon had made fewer notes and doodles in the margins than Dipper and Mabel had, and while the kids were admittedly good artists, it _hurt_ to see them commenting on Ford’s research completely unaware they were talking about their own uncle. Journal 2 also had fewer codes — apparently Ford hadn’t been too worried about anyone reading his descriptions of various cursed artifacts, even though by his own account most of those artifacts were so dangerous that he’d needed to get rid of them by burying them in the woods.

One particular item caught Stan’s eye, though:

_Scrying Eye Compact_

_This compact mirror got me in a heap of trouble, and though it holds incredible potential for the advancement of my research, even I have to admit that it’s too unsafe and unpredictable to keep around. Had my Muse not given me a helping hand, I almost certainly wouldn’t even be here to write this warning! _

_I buried it back where I found it, beneath the southernmost stall in the Northwests’ unused stables behind their mansion. I don’t even remember the reason I had for snooping around a place like that in the first place, so hopefully no one will dig it up again. _

_But even now, I have to admit that the power to spy on anyone, anywhere in the world, is incredibly tempting…_

Stan’s breath hitched. If he could spy on _anyone, anywhere_ with the mirror… could he see outside of the known world, too? _Could he see if Ford was okay?_

He flicked a few switches on the portal control panel, and a progress bar popped up on the display. It would be calibrating for at least another week, maybe even more.

He couldn’t wait that long. Not with a chance to see his brother again right within reach.

Not daring to take the Journal out of the basement, he jotted down the mirror’s location on a scrap of paper and tucked it into his pocket. Upon reaching the first floor again, he threw on a dark jacket, slacks, and a pair of boots, then stepped out into the woods through the Shack’s back door, flashlight in hand as clouds drifted in front of the nearly full moon.

***

_Though Nathaniel Northwest’s riding accident was tragic and untimely, he was survived by a daughter, Felicity Northwest, and a son, Eli Northwest, the latter of which went on to establish Pioneer Day in his late father’s honor…_

“Ugh.” Pacifica slammed her head into her desk. “I can’t believe there’s still over a_ century_ of this stuff left to read…”

Normally, she enjoyed the days her parents were out of town, since the rules were always significantly relaxed when they weren’t around, but this time, they’d left her with _homework_.

“I won’t need to know Victoria Northwest’s second favorite color to handle the family fortune responsibly! I won’t need to know the specific species of woodpecker that Reginald Northwest got disowned for trying to marry! There are so many better uses of my time than this!”

She flung open her window and stuck out her head, ready to scream her frustrations out to the empty nighttime void, but a flicker of motion near the bottom of the hill caught her eye.

From inside the abandoned stable, a thin beam of light swept past the window once, then twice. It disappeared after that, but Pacifica swore that she could see a faint glow still coming from inside, as if the light was pointing in a different direction, but still on.

“It had better not be that hillbilly making a nest again,” she muttered, but she’d already made up her mind about going to investigate. If she got caught sneaking out and her parents gave her grief over it when they got back, she could always say she thought someone was planning to rob them — they were always paranoid about break-ins, on account of living essentially next door to Stan Pines. Hillbilly or not, the light in the stable was still a mystery to solve, and she’d take that over homework any day.

<strike>Maybe those Pines twins were rubbing off on her, loath as she was to admit it.</strike>

***

In all the rush, Stan had forgotten to bring anything to dig with, but as luck would have it there was a rusty shovel leaning against the wall in one corner of the mostly-empty stable. As he brushed the cobwebs off it, he wondered if it had once been Ford’s.

Unlike the slightly muddy ground outside, the soil on the stable floor was dry and firmly packed, and Stan quickly realized he was going to have to set his flashlight down and dig with both hands on the shovel. The whole place was so musty it was almost suffocating, with a faint metallic tang in the air. 

_It smells like old money,_ Stan thought to himself with a scowl. _Gotta admit, Ford was in the right for snooping on these snobs. Only the Northwests, with money coming out of their asses, would abandon a perfectly good stable without even selling it or renting it out to anyone else once they were done with it._

Beneath his shovel, something _clinked_, and he froze, afraid he’d broken the very artifact he’d been searching for. But after brushing away the last of the dirt with his hands, he felt a cold, smooth, intact object beneath his fingertips, and he fumbled for the flashlight as he lifted his discovery out of the hole.

The closed compact mirror looked exactly how the Journal had depicted it, though Ford’s sketch hadn’t captured its colors. It was entirely silver except for two golden accents — first, the hinge connecting its two halves, and second, the long and skinny oval that bisected the top half’s circle. The silver was in need of polishing, but the golden slit gleamed beneath Stan’s flashlight as though it had never been buried beneath several pounds of soil and horse manure at all.

_Looks almost like an eye with a slit pupil,_ Stan thought to himself, ignoring the chill that ran up his spine. _Yeesh, it’s drafty in here, isn’t it? Maybe that’s why no one uses the place any more._

Poised to flip open the compact, he hesitated as an owl hooted in the distance. 

He hadn’t been that careful about avoiding detection here, had he? He’d been so impatient, so _desperate_ to confirm that Ford was alive — but he’d be no good to his brother if he went and got himself arrested now.

So he set off back through the woods, shutting the stable door behind him and grimacing at the sound of his boots squelching in the mud. For one moment, he froze, sure that he’d heard the whinny of a horse from somewhere behind him, but the noise — if it had even been real in the first place — was quickly drowned out by the sound of chirping crickets, and Stan figured that even if there _was_ a security guard or ghost horse or whatever chasing him down, they wouldn’t be able to hear his footsteps if he couldn’t hear theirs.

Of course, leaving the scene of the crime was one thing, but he was far too nervous to wait until he got all the way back to the Shack to give the mirror a better look. He settled down under a tall birch tree, on a patch of earth that seemed drier than most, and crossed his legs as he pulled out the mirror. It still seemed cold even after having been in his pocket for several minutes, and Stan couldn’t help but harken back to Ford’s warning in the journal… 

As he stared up towards the night sky, he could’ve sworn that from its position just above the treetops, the moon gave him an encouraging wink.

He opened the compact, and the chill spread from his fingertips up his arms.

Inside, only one of its two sides had a mirror. The other featured a circular portrait of a familiar bearded man, whose face Stan couldn’t place, standing in front of a grove of birches. Most of the picture was in either yellow or sepia tones, but the man’s dark red eyes seemed to flicker as they stared daggers at Stanley.

The mirror itself was even stranger, reflecting everything in grayscale except for Stan’s own face, which was a transparent, electric blue. But strangest of all was the way it _called_ to him, and he just _knew_ that if he let it pull him where it wanted, he’d be able to see anything he wanted to see, go anywhere he wanted to go.

From a distance, an owl let out a screech, but it hardly registered to Stan.

_I’m ready to see my brother again,_ he thought, and the whole world melted into a monochrome blur.

He saw a pitch-black plume of smoke rise out of the portrait, red eyes gleaming with delight as an incomprehensible smile spread across its nonexistent face.

**“Good on you, stranger!”** it told Stan with a deep chuckle. **“I was starting to doubt that you had the nerve to open it! Oh, thirty-two long years later, and I’ve returned once more to walk the earth…”**

With a dark, smoky tendril of a hand, it grabbed Stan by the throat. **“Hope you enjoy your stay in the beast’s mirror! I know I didn’t enjoy mine!”**

On reflex, Stan aimed a punch as best as he could from his restrained state, but before his fist made contact, the entity disappeared in a flash of light. Stan was left all alone, floating in the air and staring at his hands —

His blue, transparent hands.

Something beneath him clattered to the ground, and he looked down to see the compact, having slipped out of the grasp of his own unconscious body. He saw his own face staring at him with a blank expression, completely devoid of color like the surrounding forest except for in his two half-closed eyes, which were glowing blue.

With a spectral arm, he reached towards his physical form, but it passed right through his own head. 

The mirror had trapped him outside of his body.

***

Pacifica slipped past the butler with ease and made her way to the current site of the Northwest Stables, where she saddled and mounted Angel, her roan pony. There were other horses who would be faster, but Angel would be quieter, not to mention closer to the ground to facilitate searching for clues. (And to tell the truth, Pacifica trusted Angel the most — she was one of the older residents and more mellow personalities at the stables, unlike some of the younger mares who liked to get frisky.)

The two of them cut across the unused racetrack as they headed for the abandoned stables, Pacifica holding the reins in one hand and an old-fashioned lantern from the family heirlooms collection in the other. It was chilly for a July night, and with the wind blowing in her face, she was grateful she’d chosen to put on gloves and a jacket.

With a whinny, Angel came to a halt a few yards further away from the stables than Pacifica would’ve liked her to, and balked at all attempts to guide her closer. So with a sigh, Pacifica slid out of the saddle and approached the door on foot. It opened with far less resistance than she’d been expecting.

She held her lantern protectively in front of her chest, bracing herself for someone to leap out at her from the shadows within, but the stable stayed dead silent. Even as spooked and anxious as she felt, nothing inside looked alive, and the only motion she spotted came from the flickering orange flame of her own lantern.

The building had been out of use since long before she was born, so at first she wasn’t sure which details might be out of place — but as she made her way down the hallway and laid eyes upon the last stall, right next to the window she’d glimpsed the light through, her uncertainty immediately evaporated. There were no cobwebs covering the doorway, unlike every other stall she’d passed, and a hole had been messily dug in the ground, with the culprit’s shovel still stuck in the dirt and standing straight up just a foot or two away.

“Angel, we’ve been _robbed_,” Pacifica announced, bursting out of the stable and immediately mounting her pony again. “I don’t know what they stole or why it was even here in the first place, but if they think they’re going to get away with this, then they’re —”

As she guided Angel in a broad circle around the stable, a set of tracks in the mud caught her eye. In the lantern’s imperfect light, she almost mistook the footprints for her own, but at second glance, they were far too big, and led _away_ from Northwest Mansion.

“Then away from the mansion we shall follow them,” Pacifica declared with a smile. “Angel, giddyup!”

_I don’t know what’ll be better — the looks on the twins’ faces when I prove they’re not the only detectives in town, or the looks on Mom and Dad’s faces when I tell them that I never would’ve caught this robber if I’d been doing all that worthless homework instead…_

They only followed the tracks for about a minute before Angel skidded to a halt, whinnying and shaking her head.

“Hey, what’s the matter? Did something — gah! Is that a _corpse_?!”

From his position above his body, Stan whirled around. _“Hey! Northwest kid? A little help here?”_

He began to float towards her, but Pacifica dismounted and walked right through him, pinching her nose. Unlike everything else surrounding Stan, Pacifica in her purple jacket and her lantern with its flickering orange flame were patches of color in a world of gray, but that didn’t seem to mean Stan could interact with them any more than he could interact with his own body.

“Wait… Mr. Pines?” Pacifica picked up a stick with a gloved hand and gingerly poked Stan’s unconscious body with it, watching as its chest slowly rose and fell. “And he’s still breathing and everything. Guess he just decided to take a nap in the woods on the off chance he’d scare someone who thought he was dead, huh?”

_“C’mon, Pacifica!”_ Stan pleaded. He waved at her frantically, and for a split second, her lantern’s flame lit up blue as his hand passed through it, but Pacifica was preoccupied. _“Please tell me you can hear me! I… I just need someone to get a message to the kids…”_

Pacifica scooped the compact mirror off the ground, brushing the dirt away as she held it up alongside her lantern for comparison.

“Similar craftsmanship,” she remarked. “Guess he _was_ trying to rob us after all, wasn’t he?”

_“It’s not like you were using it!”_ Stan replied automatically, but once again, Pacifica didn’t seem to hear. _“My body’s eyes are glowing blue, for crying out loud! You’re telling me you can’t see that either?”_

Pacifica pocketed the mirror and mounted her pony once again, shivering slightly.

“Let’s get out of here, Angel. It feels like everything in this forest has been giving me the creeps tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Zkdw kdsshqv zkhq rqh’v Pxvh jurzv wluhg?_   
_Zkhq frqvwdqw txhvwlrqv gudz wkhlu luh?_
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments are appreciated as always — especially predictions! I’ve had a lot of fun putting together this plot, and I’m very excited to see if anyone picks up on certain pieces of foreshadowing!
> 
> (If you enjoyed, [a reblog on Tumblr would mean a lot!](https://anistarrose.tumblr.com/post/188115783981/to-see-the-unseen-chapter-1-gravity-falls))


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan meets the mirror’s creator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thanks to apathetic-revenant for betaing this chapter!
> 
> Warning for a very brief description of a dead animal, and a character being hospitalized (no character death)

“I’ve never been more ready to go to bed in my life,” Wendy groaned as she led the way back to the Mystery Shack. “You think Stan will mind if I crash on your couch for a couple hours? My brothers will be awake and screaming their heads off by the time I get home.”

“Yeah, he probably won’t mind,” Dipper replied. “Just be sure to tell him we were camping. He’ll go ballistic if he found out we almost died in the Author’s doomsday bunker.”

“But only because he cares about us,” Mabel spoke up. Her sweater was still slightly damp, and she shivered in the brisk early morning breeze. “I mean, if I was him and you guys told me you fought a shapeshifter in a fallout shelter, I’d go ballistic too!”

_“You WHAT?!”_ Stan gasped. _“What did I tell you just the other day about looking for trouble with the Journal?!”_

The kids kept walking, passing straight through him. Mabel shivered again, but other than that, they gave no sign of having heard his outburst.

_“Even if I have been a hypocrite about it…”_ Stan whispered.

Wendy squinted at the Shack, raising a hand to shade her eyes from the morning sun. “Hey, am I so tired I’m hallucinating, or is that Blubs and Durland on the porch?”

“Oh, great. What did Stan do this time?” Dipper mumbled. “Hey, Soos, you should _probably_ hide that laptop from them —”

“Pines kids!” Durland shouted. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here! Something terrible has happened!”

Soos, Wendy, and the twins stared at him with glazed-over, sleep-deprived eyes.

“You need us to… help solve a mystery?” Dipper asked.

“A murder mystery?” Mabel echoed, rubbing her eyes. “We have a kind-of-okay track record with those…”

“Whatever it is, I have an alibi,” Wendy muttered.

Blubs stepped forward, gaze fixed on the floorboards. “It’s about… it’s about your uncle.”

_“Shit,”_ Stan mumbled. _“Kids, whatever they say happened, I promise it’s not actually that bad —”_

His voice cut off. Was that even _true_? He didn’t know a single thing about what being trapped in this gray mirror world meant for him — it easily could be not just ‘that bad,’ but even _worse_.

“Is Mr. Pines okay?” Soos asked. “What happened?!”

“He’s in the hospital. Dan Corduroy found him in the forest this morning, and… well, I’m no doctor, but apparently he didn’t seem injured and his vitals were all A-okay. He just… won’t wake up no matter what anyone tries.”

Mabel gasped, and Soos covered his mouth.

“Do — do you know how it happened?” Dipper stammered. “Was it one of the anomalies? How long has he been unconscious?”

Blubs sighed. “I’m so sorry, Dipper, but I don’t know a single thing. You know what — here, get into the squad car. I’ll drive you to the hospital so you can see him.”

Stan drifted after his family, watching as they piled into the police car. Mabel stared out the window, quieter than Stan had ever seen her before, while Dipper buried his nose in Journal 3, frantically flipping through pages so quickly he gave himself a paper cut.

“It’ll be alright,” Mabel told him without making eye contact. “The doctors will figure something out.”

“But what if they don’t?” Dipper asked. He didn’t seem to have even noticed his finger was bleeding. “What if medicine can’t help him, because it’s _supernatural_?” he continued in a voice barely above a whisper. “There’s no info about anything like this in the Journal — but if only I had the other volumes, then maybe _they’d_ have something that could help. Something about how to cure him…”

_“Oh, Dipper,”_ Stan murmured. _“It just got me into this mess in the first place…”_

***

Pacifica lay in bed, half-awake, for longer than usual that morning, until the sound of a servant knocking on her door startled her, and she finally crawled out from under the satin sheets. It took a few seconds of staring at the compact mirror resting atop her dresser before the events of the past night rushed back to her, and she shuddered.

The mirror still gave her bad vibes, even in broad daylight and outside of the infamously unnerving Gravity Falls forest. It reminded her of certain taxidermy-filled rooms of the mansion, especially the allegedly haunted one — there was just a sort of chill in the air around it, _just barely_ subtle enough for you to convince yourself it was only your imagination acting up.

Even though she hadn’t changed out of her nightgown yet and would’ve looked ridiculous had anyone been around to see her, Pacifica put on a pair of gloves before opening the mirror. She was still going against both her gut feeling and basic common sense by examining the artifact at all, but she knew that if she hid it away now, there would eventually come a day when she grew so bored, she wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation any longer.

Despite bracing herself for the worst, nothing cataclysmic happened when she opened the mirror — no swarms of insects flew out, no bolts of dark magic incinerated her, and as far as she could tell, no deadly plagues seemed to be released into the world.

But although it wasn’t quite the Pandora’s Box she’d been expecting, it was most _definitely_ supernatural. The mirror reflected everything in grayscale, except for her own body, which glowed blue. And the picture below…

Surprisingly, it looked incomplete. A broad-shouldered silhouette dressed in dark clothing stood in front of a row of trees, that much was clear, but most of the details were missing, especially around the completely blank area where a face should’ve been.

“Well, that’s freaky…” Pacifica was about to rummage through the contents of her desk, looking for a magnifying glass to examine the portrait more closely, when her maid knocked on her door again, and she reflexively snapped the mirror closed.

“Remember, your dance tutor will be arriving at ten o’clock sharp! You’d best be eating breakfast soon, unless you want to be late!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!” Pacifica called back, shoving the mirror under her pillow as she hastily selected a dress from her closet and a necklace from her jewelry box before rushing to the bathroom. “I’ll be back for you,” she whispered to the mirror.

The mirror didn’t reply, but had it still been opened, Pacifica might’ve noticed that the portrait was ever-so-slowly growing closer to completion, adding a tie to the figure’s sharp black suit.

***

After a few minutes of asking the doctors one question after another, none of which they were able to answer, Dipper threw a glass of cold water in his face, adjusted his hat, and declared that he was off to investigate the place where Stan had been found, hoping to find some evidence that would lead to a cure. Wendy quickly announced she was going with him, which didn’t surprise Stan — he knew she’d never been fond of hospitals.

Figuring it would be smart to stay close to his body in case of a breakthrough, Stan didn’t follow Dipper and Wendy as they left, but still he overheard Dipper muttering to himself:

“I need to find the other Journals. One of them _must_ have the answer to getting him back, somehow…”

_“Come on, kid,”_ Stan whispered. _“Don’t you go down this road too. It’s no fun to live your life like this, trust me…”_

Mabel pulled her chair right up next to Stan’s hospital bed, and leaned up against him, burying her head in his spare pillow. Soos sat on the other side of the room, half-heartedly flipping through hospital-provided health magazines and flinching almost every time Stan’s heart monitor beeped. Like Pacifica, neither of them had reacted to the pale blue glow that Stan could see coming from beneath his body’s half-closed eyelids. 

He tried to give Mabel a reassuring pat on the back, to no avail. Her breathing slowed as his hand passed through her shoulder, and for a second he was afraid he’d hurt her somehow, but then she began to snore quietly, and he realized she’d just fallen asleep.

_“What am I gonna do, Soos?”_ Stan asked. _“I can’t get back in my body, I can’t tell you what happened, I can’t even let you know I’m okay…”_

A new, terrifying realization dawned on him. _“I can’t operate the portal! I was so _close_ to getting Ford back, so goddamn _close_! But how am I going to save him if I’m trapped in this mirror world?!”_

_“You could always do what he did, and get a little help from a friend!”_

The voice wasn’t spoken out loud as much as it resonated in Stan’s mind, high-pitched and echoing in a way that made his nonexistent ears ache. He was also pretty sure he’d heard it before, even if he hadn’t been in the most coherent state at the time.

_“I swear,” _he growled,_ “if I turn around and see that screaming geometry dipshit from my nightmare last week, I’m gonna puke ghost guts all over that one-eyed piss-yellow triangular ass of his.”_

The being behind him began to clap. _“Go ahead and turn around, then! I’d love to see it!”_

Stan turned, and sure enough, found himself facing a one-eyed, piss-yellow, triangular entity.

_“Well? Where’s the ghost puke you promised me?”_

_“Shut the fuck up, Bill. That _is_ your name, right? I gotta be sure you know exactly how much I hate _your_ dumb whiny voice in particular.”_

_“Read about me in Fordsy’s journal, did you?”_ Bill asked, twirling his cane.

Stan raised a hand to his ear. _“Huh, what’s that noise? ‘Cause it definitely _isn’t_ a first grader’s math homework shutting the fuck up, that’s for sure!”_

Bill let his cane go flying out of his grip and through the nearest wall, disappearing from view for a moment before popping back into existence in his other hand. _“Oh, Stanley, Stanley, Stanley. I’m here to _help_ you, just like I helped Sixer! So let’s not say anything we’ll end up regretting later —”_

_“Too late.”_ The cocky grin disappeared from Stan’s face as he made a fist. _“No one calls Ford ‘Sixer’ but me, and you’re _really_ gonna regret mixing that one up if I have anything to say about it.”_

_“Oh, my bad!”_ Bill shot back, voice dripping with sarcasm. _“I didn’t mean to slight your precious sibling relationship, which you both clearly value SO much! If only I could make it up to you by… I dunno, saving you from ETERNAL IMPRISONMENT?!”_

_“I’ve broken out of prison in three different countries, I’ll be fine on my own. Also, I _know_ you tried to hurt my family when you all went off on your wild goose chase through my mind — and call me overprotective of those kids if you want to, but in my book, that’s a pretty good reason not to make any dark magical contracts with you.”_

For the first time, Bill looked genuinely looked caught off guard by one of Stan’s comebacks. _“You were _conscious_ for that? You know what, forget it. I —”_

_“Well, I mean, I was asleep — but I was _definitely_ dreaming about you getting your ass kicked.”_

_“I said FORGET IT!”_ Bill snapped. 

_“Touchy subject, eh?”_

_“It was in the past! It doesn’t matter anymore!”_ Bill shouted._ “You need my help and my deal _now_, Stanley Pines, and there’s no way around it!”_

Stan floated lower, until he was able to roughly approximate sitting at the foot of the bed. _“Well, looks like I’ve got all day to kill and nothing better to do. I’m not gonna listen, but you might as well start making your case anyway.”_

Bill’s eye narrowed with glee, and he began to chuckle to himself, then _cackle_ louder and louder until it felt like his laughter would never stop echoing inside Stan’s head. 

_“Here’s the thing, Stanley — you really don’t have all day at all! In fact, you have…”_

With a burst of flame, he summoned a ticking gold pocketwatch in his hand. _“Exactly twelve hours and two minutes!”_

_“Until _what_? I’m not gonna fold and cut a deal with you just because of a vague threat and a time limit — that’s like, even more basic than Manipulation 101.”_

Bill laughed, and his pocketwatch cooed like a cuckoo clock as an avian skeleton sprung out of the hole in the center. _“Twelve hours until your body stops breathing, obviously! It’ll be real sudden, too — no time for the doctors to switch you over to life support before your brain runs out of oxygen!”_ One of his arms extended as he reached over to Stan, rapping him on the skull. _“Then again, I’m not sure you’re getting much blood flow up there in the first place. Certainly less than old Fordsy —”_

_“Why should I believe you?”_ Stan asked. _“If I was a math nerd’s demonic fever dream, I’d be making up bullshit life-or-death ultimatums left and right. Who would be be dumb enough to make a bargain with me otherwise?”_

_“Oh, you’d be surprised. But to answer your question, just look at your own eyes, down there in your body! They’re not even glowing half as bright as when you first got flipped into the mindscape, and they’re only gonna keep getting dimmer until the connection’s gone altogether!”_

Bill snapped his fingers, summoning a plume of blue flame in which an image of the mirror flickered into existence. _“When that portrait in the compact is completed, exactly twenty-four hours from the moment you entered the mirror, you’ll be severed from the living world forever — and that’s not all! Your soul gets trapped inside that musty old picture to rot and fester until either someone new scries with the mirror, or eternity itself comes grinding to a halt at the end of the world! That’s the beauty of it: you get to be all-seeing — almost like me! — for exactly one day, but once that’s over, all you’ll ever see again is the inside of a closed compact!”_

The image in the flames faded away as they swirled around Bill’s hand, which he extended in Stan’s direction. _“But I can put you back in your body, and send the mirror’s previous prisoner back into the painting instead! I can _save_ you, just like I saved your brother! Whaddya say?”_

_“Yeah, of course,”_ Stan answered, voice dripping with sarcasm._ “All makes perfect sense to me. You _just so happen_ to be the world’s leading expert on cursed mirror and equally cursed painting combos!”_

_“Well, why wouldn’t I be? I helped _make_ the thing, after all!”_

_“Oh, did you? That explains why holding it instantly reminded me of my deep hatred for trigonometry.”_

Bill ignored him. _“You know, your brother wasn’t the only mortal I’ve been a Muse to! He was just the only one in recent memory who was actually USEFUL. I’ve appeared before countless pupils over the years, looking for someone who’d be smart, ambitious, and not to mention gullible enough to help me fulfill my vision — but before Six-Fingers, everyone fell short. And worse — some of them wouldn’t stop summoning me even after I’d given up on them! They kept asking me inane questions about the beginning of the universe and the meaning of life!”_

His triangular body turned bright red and the flames surrounding him roared as he continued: _“Life doesn’t HAVE a meaning! Humanity was put on the planet to reproduce, die, and make meaningless philosophical arguments in a desperate attempt to convince themselves that morality and ethics are worth anything in the callous void that is existence — what else did they want me to tell them?! Some saccharine bullshit about being born so they could make the world a better place?”_

_“So you got fed up, and made the mirror to trap one of your ex-pawns?”_ Stan asked.

The flames disappeared, and Bill seemed to calm down, turning yellow again. _“You catch on faster than I thought you would! I tricked one of my most insufferable pupils into creating it, and sure enough, he hasn’t bothered me since!”_

_“So when Ford tried to scry with the mirror thirty something years ago, he freed that guy’s ghost — but you still thought Ford would still be _useful_, didn’t you?”_ Stan tried to keep his voice calm, but he was starting to get a good idea of just who had driven Ford to such paranoia and desperation thirty years ago, and he was _fuming_ inside. _“So you freed Ford by switching his place with the ghost of that first guy you trapped.”_

_“Exactly!”_ Bill cheered, rubbing his hands together. _“And I can do the same for you — just give me the word, and you’ll be back in your body before you know it!”_

_“Let’s imagine a parallel universe where I was a dumbass and I _did_ take your deal. What other conditions would you be hiding in the fine print?”_

_“Oh, I wouldn’t be hiding it! I’d actually be rather upfront, just like I’m being right now!” _Bill smacked Stan on the head with a roll of paper, which unfurled to reveal a document titled CONTRACT. 

_“All I’d ask is for you do owe me one tiny favor down the line — a chance for me to borrow your restored body for a few hours when the right moment rolls around! I mean, you’ve coped without it for this long — what’ll one more brief stint in the mindscape be to a pro like you?”_

_“Yeah, I’m gonna have to say FUCK NO to that. I know you’re used to dealing with my brother, the most gullible genius on the planet, but while he may have all the brains, _I_ have some actual goddamn common sense.”_

_“But — but don’t you want to open the portal?”_ Bill asked him, a little too quickly. _“I’d like to see you try and operate it without your body!”_

_“Well, yeah — but are you really expecting _me_ to be able to activate it all on my own? Even with all the journals, I’ve still got no idea what I’m doing,” _Stan lied. _“I could just as easily flip the thing’s self-destruct switch as I could find the right settings to bring Ford back. I’ll feel guilty if I can’t at least _try_, but… it was a hell of a long shot in the first place. I accepted that a long time ago, even if I don’t like to admit it.”_

_“Are you kidding me?!”_ Bill shouted. _“The thing doesn’t even HAVE a self-destruct switch! I — I could even sweeten the deal, if you want! I could help you turn it on! This has been thirty years in the making — you can’t just give up on it now! Also, did I forget to mention YOUR ETERNAL FUCKING IMPRISONMENT and SLOW, PAINFUL CORRUPTION INTO A REVENGE-BENT MONSTER?!”_

_Okay, so Bill really wants the portal activated for some reason,_ Stan thought to himself. _Interesting._

Out loud, he told Bill: _“I’ve been messing around with too much shit that I don’t understand since before you even showed up. I’m not adding a deal with a demon to that list, and that’s final. Besides, you’re forgetting that the kids will probably figure something out. They always do.”_

_“Well, that sure is a cute sentiment!”_ Bill shot back. _“But you’re already as good as dead to them, Stanley. They can’t see you, they can’t hear you — and soon enough, if you don’t do something, they won’t be able to feel your heart beating in your body anymore either!”_

_“Oh, I do plan on doing _something_,”_ Stan replied with a straight face. _“It just won’t be the something you _want_ me to do.”_

_“My offer still stands!”_ Bill shouted as he disappeared in a burst of blue flames. _“Just call my name once it sinks in how doomed you are without me, and I’ll be right there to shake your hand and seal the deal!”_

Mabel, still asleep next to Stan’s body, let out a deep sigh as Bill vanished, but otherwise didn’t react to their conversation. She was hugging Stan’s arm and clutching handfuls of the bedsheet like it was the lifeline tying Stan to the world, and if only she held on tight enough, she’d be able to drag him back.

And maybe, in a roundabout way, she could.

_“Bill said I’m all-seeing like him until my twelve hours are up,”_ Stan explained to her, even knowing it wouldn’t be heard. _“So if you’ll bear with me here, Mabel…”_

He placed his hand over her forehead, and closed his eyes.

_“I’m gonna see if I can haunt dreams like him too.”_

***

Pacifica’s dance lesson dragged on for over an hour, showing no signs of coming to an end until she claimed to be experiencing a dehydration-induced dizzy spell and her instructor reluctantly excused her, probably fearing a lawsuit. She headed back to her room right away, and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that her pillow — and the mirror beneath it — hadn’t been disturbed. She was going to have to find a better hiding place for it soon.

As she pulled out a map of the mansion, trying to think of nooks and crannies that no one ever checked, a _thud_ from the hallway made her jump. She almost brushed it off, chalking it up to her imagination, when she heard it again, and then a third time, growing louder with each repetition.

It didn’t sound like footsteps — or at least, not the footsteps of any human. If anything, it sounded like solid stone was striking the hallway’s hardwood floor.

Pacifica watched, frozen in place, as a veil of smoke materialized around her doorknob, twisting it counterclockwise degree by degree as the door ever-so-slowly swung open —

And then she laughed, because what she was seeing in the hallway couldn’t have been further from the monster she’d been expecting.

“You’re a _statue_,” she snickered, and her visitor’s stone eyes lit up red.

**Oh, but not just any statue,** a voice boomed from inside the familiar face that had once watched over the town square. **I’m Gravity Falls’ very own Nathaniel Northwest!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was very excited for this chapter since I don’t write a whole lot of Stan and Bill interacting (outside of Some Sunny Day, which was a whole different beast altogether). And sure enough, I had a ton of fun with Stan’s dialogue, which led to this chapter being about a thousand words longer than expected.
> 
> Anyways, comments are appreciated as always, as are [reblogs on tumblr!](https://anistarrose.tumblr.com/post/188288708416/to-see-the-unseen-ch-2-gravity-falls)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mabel and Pacifica both receive visits from ghosts with _very_ different intentions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is starting to look more like a five-chapter fic because I got an idea for an epilogue, so stay tuned for two more parts after this one!
> 
> Warnings for: nightmares, brief canon-typical violence, descriptions of a hospital room

Truth be told, Stan had thought that entering Mabel’s dreams would be harder. He wasn’t sure if he’d been expecting her to resist, or simply that it would’ve taken more concentration on his part — but in reality, all he had to do was blink, and when he opened his eyes, he was surrounded by vivid colors and funny animals.

It frightened him the more he thought about it, knowing that it was probably this easy for Bill too, and that _this_ was all the effort it took for him to enter someone’s mind with his surely less-than-benevolent intentions. Stan hoped that Bill wasn’t watching him now and getting any ideas — because at the end of the day, the threat of his family being tormented scared Stan more than imprisonment in a mirror ever would. It didn’t seem like that realization had occurred to Bill yet, but there was no telling what he might do if he noticed Stan poking around in Mabel’s dreams… 

But there wasn’t much Stan could do about that now, other than try and get in and out of here as quickly as possible.

“Mabel?” he called, stepping over a sleeping Ducktective as he surveyed the area. “You in here, pumpkin?”

A sickeningly neon young man, who Stan recognized from one of Mabel’s favorite direct-to-VHS 80’s cartoon movies, stuck his head out of a nearby bounce house and blinked a few times, tilting his head like a confused puppy.

“Hey dude, you look suspiciously not-radical! You’re not from ‘round here, are you? What do you want from us?”

Stan held up his hands. “Look, I’m just trying to talk to my niece. Trust me, I know exactly how weird this is, and I don’t like it either! I don’t _want_ to be invading her dreams, and I _definitely_ didn’t mean to get turned into a ghost —”

“Oh! You’re from the _real_ world, aren’t you? That would make more sense.”

“Uh, yeah? Where _else_ would I be from?”

The dream boy lowered his voice to a whisper. “Mabel has other dreams besides us sometimes — hard to believe, I know. But those dreams… they’re pretty different from us. We don’t really _vibe_ with them, if you know what I mean, so we keep our distance — or at least, we _try_ to, but they still sneak in here sometimes. More often than usual, lately.”

“Well, that’s ominous,” Stan muttered. “Mabel wouldn’t happen to be with those… those other dreams now, would she?”

The dream boy shrugged. “I dunno, man. Why don’t you follow her footprints and find out?”

“Footprints?” Stan looked down, and sure enough, a set of tracks was visible in the golden, crystalline sand beneath his feet. The imprints were too small to be from his own dress shoes, but just the right size and shape to have been left by Mabel’s sneakers. “Oh, those prints. Thanks for the tip, uh… which one are you again? Xyler or Craz?”

“Even _I_ don’t know, bro! What even _is_ the self, when the only reality I’ve ever known is just a series of another being’s fleeting dreams? David Hume postulated that —”

“Alrighty then, I’m gonna go find Mabel now.” As the dream boy grew preoccupied with quoting dead philosophers, Stan set off in the direction of the footprints — following them down the hill, past a group of sledding stuffed animals, and into a forest of lava lamps. Mabel had taken a winding and haphazard path, doubling back on herself a few times, and Stan got the feeling she’d been more or less sleepwalking, without any specific goal in mind.

He exited the forest to find himself standing on a beach, where the yellow sand fizzed and popped like crystalline candy where it met the waves of a deep pink ocean. The view overhead was as clear as could be, with countless fantastical constellations animating and chasing each other across the dark purple sky, and the whole place smelled of sugar and artificial fruit flavorings.

But the whole coast was barren of life except for Mabel’s footsteps, which led directly into the water.

“Mabel?” Stan called. “Can you hear me?”

No response. 

<strike>Maybe his voice was still as silent to her ears as it had been in the real world. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to hear him even if he found her.</strike>

But he couldn’t just give up now. He followed in Mabel’s footsteps towards the fizzing boundary between crystals and ocean, pinching his nose as the smell intensified, and then stepped in.

Instantly, he realized it wasn’t water. It was more like syrup, sticky and viscous and sickly-sweet, and the receding waves tugged him forwards until he was in up to his knees before he knew it. But he had a better view at what lay beneath the surface now, and he could make out a small, blurry light source illuminating the ocean from below — yellow and five-pointed, like the shooting star on Mabel’s favorite sweater.

“Is that you, sweetie? Can you hear me?”

He was up to his waist now, then to his shoulders. He stood on his tiptoes as the ocean floor slowly dissolved beneath him. Instinctively, he knew he still had a chance to struggle free and escape the dream, but with each wave that passed by him, he only grew only more and more determined that he wasn’t going to leave.

“Hang tight, Mabel. I’m coming.” He took a deep breath, and dove beneath the surface.

Surrounded by dense liquid and fizzing bubbles, it was difficult to see and even more difficult to move — but Stan imagined himself sinking towards the light, and sure enough, some force propelled him downwards. He always had been good at manipulating what happened in his own lucid dreams, and it was reassuring to know that the talent had carried over to Mabel’s dreams too.

The star was coming into clearer focus, and Stan extended an arm towards it, only to hit something solid that collapsed beneath the force of his touch. The dark purple seafloor began to crumble away, revealing an even darker chasm below in which the star still floated, and a whirlpool swirled into existence around it, catching Stan in its vortex and pulling him in —

He crashed through the earthen roof of a room he didn’t recognize, nearly hitting his head against a boulder as a deluge of water carried him down the tunnel. It took him a few seconds to come to his senses, but when he did, he instantly recognized the voice he heard echoing from within the next room:

“Take that! And _that_, you shapeshifting jerk!”

“Mabel!” Stan broke into a frantic run, hurtling around the corner —

He saw an alien, insectoid monster with bulging red eyes swing its claw-like arm towards Mabel, but she darted out of the way and clocked it on the head with a piece of pipe. It collapsed like a rag doll the second she struck it, toppling to the ground and slowly shrinking until it resembled…

“No,” Mabel whispered, “no, no, no…”

The shapeshifter, now in the form of Stan’s unconscious body in his hospital gown, heaved out one last breath before lying very still as Mabel rushed to its side.

“Grunkle Stan, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to! You’re going to be okay, you _have_ to be okay, _I didn’t mean to_ —”

“Mabel!” Stan rushed to her side and gently pulled her away by her shoulders, lifting her up and wrapping her in a hug. “It’s okay, sweetie. That guy’s just a nightmare — the real me is right here with you, and I’m _okay_, I promise.”

“What?” Mabel had instinctively buried her face in the shoulder of Stan’s suit as she cried, but she looked up now, a realization beginning to dawn on her. “Grunkle Stan? Why are you… glowing blue?”

“I had a little accident,” Stan admitted, “but you and me and your brother are all gonna fix it together. I know we can.”

He set her down on the ground, and snapped his fingers in the direction of the shapeshifter’s body, which promptly dissolved into a swarm of swarm of blue fireflies that took off through the bunker. “That’s better. Having to look at that guy was no fun, was it?”

Mabel rubbed her eyes. “Am I dreaming?”

“No! Well, yeah, but this _is_ the real me you’re talking to — and you’ve gotta bear with me here, you can’t wake up just yet. There’s a lot I still need to tell you!”

“What happened to you? How are you unconscious in real life, but also in my dreams?”

“I… found a cursed artifact. Like, really, _really_ cursed — it looked just like a fancy compact mirror, but it pulled my soul out of my body… hey, you know what? Let me ask you a weird question: you know Bill Cipher, right?”

Mabel immediately tensed up. “_He_ did this to you?!”

“Not quite,” Stan corrected her. “I did this to myself — just me and my recklessness, all on our own — but Bill stopped by a while ago to tell me how the mirror worked.”

He held out a hand and concentrated, summoning an image of the mirror much like Bill had earlier, as he gave Mabel the condensed version of what had happened to him and everything he’d learned from Bill. He left out the bits about Ford and the portal, as well as the detail about how a new person scrying should in theory release him — he didn’t want the kids getting any dumb ideas. <strike>He didn’t want them trying what _he’d_ do if their roles were reversed.</strike>

“He said that once it’s been twenty-four hours since I used the mirror — so at about eleven PM tonight, I guess — I’ll be trapped inside the portrait forever.” Mabel gasped, and he put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Bill said he could get me out, but only if I do him a favor — which I’m _never_ going to do. Not after everything he’s done to my family. I’m not taking his deal.”

“But you can’t just give up!” Mabel told him, grabbing him by the lapels of his suit and shaking him with surprising force. “We need you back here with us, Grunkle Stan!”

“I’m _not_ giving up. I never will — we’ve got that in common, all of us Pines.” Stan smiled, despite himself. “There’s only one time I’ve ever given up in my life, and that was when Gideon took the Shack — but you know how that turned out. You and Dipper saved the day, and proved me _wrong_.” He patted Mabel on the head, mussing up her hair. “And now I know better than to lose hope ever again.”

“But how will you get back in your body all on your own? Do you have a plan?”

“Not really,” Stan admitted. “Not _yet_. But I know the type of guy Bill is, and I know how he works. He’s just a big old liar, and he’s not always as good at it as he thinks he is. He’ll make it sound like I’m doomed without his help, but odds are, there’s a loophole somewhere that I can use to escape all on my own. We just need to get the mirror back from the Northwests, so you and Dipper can take a look at it and put his nerd brain, my scam artist brain, and your creative brain together to figure this thing out.”

Mabel took him by the hands. “And if we can’t find a loophole in time?”

“I do have a Plan B, if it comes down to it. There’s definitely a reason why it’s not Plan A, but… it’s always there in case we need it.”

Mabel stared into his eyes, tightening her grip on his hands. “Promise me you won’t do anything risky, Grunkle Stan? We’ve all been really worried about you — Dipper and Wendy and Soos and I…”

“I’m not leaving you, kiddo. Promise.”

Mabel hugged him. “Good.”

Her arms began to flicker, as did Stan’s, and the dream slowly faded to white.

“I can’t talk to you when you’re awake, so you’re going to have to get the others caught up. But I’ll see you again soon, don’t worry.”

He blinked, and found himself floating in the hospital room again, watching Mabel wake up and rub her eyes.

“Hey, Mabel,” Soos said glumly. He looked more exhausted than Stan had ever seen him, even on the days he’d tried to come into work sick. “There haven’t been any updates…”

“You guys, I had an idea!” Dipper practically kicked the door open as he barged back into the room, and Mabel jumped. 

“We could use the mindscape spell to find Stan’s memory of how he got knocked unconscious! And if those memories work anything like the way they did last time we were in his mind, we might even be able to communicate directly — Mabel, what’s so funny? This is a serious idea —”

Mabel snickered as she shook her head at Dipper. “You’re right, it _is_ a good idea — but the thing is, Stan kinda already beat you to it.”

***

The hospital room’s quietly ticking clock read 12:15 PM when Mabel finally finished catching the others up on what Stan had told her through her dream.

“You said the Northwests have the mirror now?” Dipper asked.

“Yeah, Stan saw Pacifica take it back to their mansion.”

“The Northwests would never willingly let us take something valuable they owned even if they had two hundred extras,” Wendy declared. “I vote we break in and steal it.”

Mabel gasped. “Okay, Pacifica may be a rich one-dimensional jerk, but she’s not a _murderer_! If we told her our grunkle’s life was in jeopardy, I’m sure she’d help us!”

_“Break in anyway,”_ Stan told them. _“Why are you passing up a morally justifiable chance to do crime?”_

“You’re _probably_ right, but I’m not betting Stan’s life on a spoiled rich kid’s moral compass,” Dipper told Mabel. “And even if she does want to help, there’s no guarantee her parents would go along with it.”

“I saw on the news the other day that her parents are out of town for the weekend,” Soos spoke up. “Took a big helicopter and everything.”

“Oh, that explains why they haven’t thrown a hissy fit yet about how the Nathaniel Northwest statue from the town square got stolen last night,” Wendy said. “The second they see it’s gone, they’ll probably sue the city for ruining their family’s image or something.”

Stan groaned. _“We have eleven hours! _Eleven hours_, and you’re on track to spend _all_ of them just sitting here torturing me by exchanging Northwest gossip!”_

Dipper flipped through Journal 3. “The Author was no fan of the Northwests. I wonder if he left any blackmail material on them that we haven’t exhausted yet…”

_Ford._ The realization hit Stan like a truck. _I’ve been stuck as a ghost for half the day and I haven’t even tried to do the thing I wanted the mirror for in the first place. I haven’t tried to find Ford!_

The kids continued talking amongst themselves, though most of their words went in one of Stan’s ears and out the other.

_They’ll be at this for a while — I’ve got _time_. I made it into Mabel’s dreams, how hard can it be to do the same thing with my own _twin_? I can _do_ this. I can finally _see_ him again…_

The voices and other ambient sounds of the hospital faded as he concentrated on his brother’s face, and reached out into unfamiliar expanse of the multiverse.

***

“Here’s what I don’t get, Grandpa. _Can_ I call you Grandpa? ‘Great-Great-Grandfather’ takes too long to say.”

Cracks formed at the statue’s shoulder and elbows as Nathaniel repositioned his stone arms into a shrug. **Why not?**

“Why did you only come back to haunt us now? You died almost a hundred and forty years ago, from that riding accident —”

Nathaniel’s eyes flashed orange, and wisps of smoke began to snake out from between the cracks in the statue. **Riding accident? Is that what they told you? Well, it certainly _did_ happen at the stables…**

“...It didn’t have anything to do with the horses there, did it?” Pacifica realized out loud. “It was the mirror!”

**Tell me, granddaughter: what else do the history books say about me? Do they talk about my discoveries in the field of the occult?**

Pacifica shook her head.

**Of course they don’t! **Nathaniel roared. **My own two children, Felicity and Eli, disapproved of my study of the monstrous. They thought our influence as Northwests should only extend to the mundane — and so, as I aged and they took more control of the family fortune for themselves, they conspired against me to hide my discoveries from the public! I was a nineteenth-century _wizard_, Pacifica, and they thought I was insane! I could’ve extended the Northwest’s influence to a whole new society of supernatural beings, but they called me a crazy old man and hired servants to keep me far away from the woods of Gravity Falls!**

“That’s horrible! You had a _vision_, and they stifled it!”

**It was horrible indeed,** Nathaniel agreed, **but the worst betrayal was yet to come. **

He gestured to the lantern Pacifica had brought on her ride last night, which was now resting on her bedside table. **I see you found my old lantern — did you know that with just a tiny tuft of animal hair added to the oil, it gains the power to illuminate ghosts? I developed that spell myself!**

“Really? I didn’t even know this lantern was yours — you must be some kind of genius to develop that spell on your own!”

**I certainly am, and it brings me no small amount of joy to see a member of my own line finally appreciating my work! One day when my overbearing children were out of town, I used that lantern to follow several spirits through the forest and out to the farthest reaches of the town, where I discovered a cave — **

His voice lowered to a growl. **And inside that cave, I found the _beast_.**

The smoke escaping from his ghostly form condensed into a triangular shape, which Nathaniel smashed between two stone fists. **Though at the time, I called him my Muse — I had a great many questions, and he had answers. For several months, I made discovery after discovery — capturing new anomalies for scientific analysis, charting the woods and the cave systems…**

“But he turned on you too, didn’t he?”

**At first, it was just simple disagreements. Different priorities. He wanted us to study other worlds, but I thought Gravity Falls still had untapped potential! More territory to annex, more undocumented supernatural residents to charge rent for their use of our lands — do you have any idea how _rich_ unicorns are? They practically frolick in fields of golden coins! My Muse grew impatient with me, refusing to answer _any_ of my questions that didn’t relate to gates between worlds, but I kept summoning him. Who did he think he was, withholding information from me? From Nathaniel Northwest?!**

A hand made of smoke extended from the statue, taking hold of the mirror. **But when I told him as much, my Muse not only ‘apologized,’ but in his _infinite_ wisdom, suggested a ‘solution.’ He admitted that he was disinterested in my current work, but helped me create a device that would make me just as all-seeing as he was, so I could continue my research all on my own. And for twenty-four hours… the mirror worked like a charm. I was _omniscient_.**

He flipped open the mirror to reveal the current picture — depicting a gray-haired man in a familiar suit and tie, still lacking facial features. **But when my portrait was completed, I was trapped. I couldn’t see anything, least of all my mortal body. My power only grew over my years of imprisonment, and I transformed from a ghost that couldn’t touch the physical world into this powerful specter you see now, but in a cruel twist of fate, I couldn’t leave the mirror to _do_ anything with that power.**

Pacifica squinted at the current portrait. “Hang on. Is that…”

**Be careful, granddaughter. Stare into the mirror with the intent to scry, and you’ll be trapped yourself.** Nathaniel snapped the mirror shut.

**The isolation wasn’t even the worst part,** he went on.** No, the worst part was thirty-two years ago, when I glimpsed freedom! A foolish young researcher was snooping on Northwest property and found my reflective prison, attempting to scry and freeing me in the process — but as it turned out, he was my Muse’s _new_ pupil. His more _useful_ pupil. And so that beast cast a spell over the mirror he’d instructed me to create, freeing his current pawn and trapping me back inside!**

“But what did he and his new pawn end up doing? You mentioned something about other _worlds _— was he some kind of alien?”

**If you haven’t seen the result of the beast’s plans all these years later, then he surely failed,** Nathaniel mused. **Good for him. I can concentrate on extending the family business to the supernatural market, and finally prove my children wrong!**

He rubbed his chin. **Though at least they managed to insert me in all the history books as town founder, earning me the posthumous respect I deserve! And commissioned a mighty fine statue to commemorate me, at that —**

“Actually, Grandpa,” Pacifica interrupted, “most of the town knows you weren’t the founder, as of last Pioneer Day.”

**They WHAT?**

“Yeah, uh… a couple of kids my age, Dipper and Mabel Pines, dug up some top secret Quentin Trembley documents. Dipper especially made a big deal about rubbing it in my face and telling as many people as possible.”

A tiny bit of stone from one of the statue’s eyes liquified, dropping to the ground and hissing as it struck the floor.

**Well then, **Nathaniel murmured, **I’ll have to let those meddling Pines children know that _that’s_ unacceptable.**

***

“I’m gonna stay here,” Soos told the others as they prepared to set off for Northwest Mansion. He pointed towards Stan’s body. “It just feels like someone should stick around to keep an eye on him, you know?”

“Good idea,” Dipper agreed. “That way, you can text Wendy if the doctors have updates.”

Mabel glanced around the room, not sure quite what she was looking for. “You’re here watching us, aren’t you, Stan? If you’re ready to go get the mirror back, can you give us some kind of sign?”

Aside from the ticking clock and beeping heart monitor, the room fell silent. No chills moved through the air, and no objects suspiciously fell off shelves.

“Well, I’m sure he’s still keeping an eye on us,” Mabel assured the others. “Let’s get going.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, comments/[reblogs](https://anistarrose.tumblr.com/post/188502395731/to-see-the-unseen-ch-3-gravity-falls) are appreciated as always! This is the chapter that’s changed the most from the outline so far, since I really love mindscape stuff and elaborated on Mabel’s dream a lot more than I’d planned to. Also, Nathaniel is an overdramatic monologuing capitalist asshole and writing him is very fun.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The kids embark on a quest to take back the mirror, and Stan embarks on a quest to find his brother. Neither goes quite according to plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said last chapter had changed the most from the outline? This chapter has it beat by a pretty large margin, but I’m so glad it changed because I feel like it really went from good to great.

_Come on, Ford, where _are_ you… _

Moving scenes flickered by Stan, like a projector wheel was whirring and spinning inside his head. Gilled alien children, playing in an underwater kelp forest. A group of humanoid beings celebrating as a sleek rocket ship lifted off in front of them. 

A city burning. A smaller town rebuilding. A man offering a few scraps of food to a stray dog. Two chimeras with bat wings and scorpion stingers, chasing each other across a starlit desert sky.

Yet for all their diversity, none of the scenes showed anyone resembling Ford.

_He’s _got_ to be out here somewhere. I would feel it if anything happened to him, I’m _sure_ I would —_

A long-abandoned space station colliding with a comet. A small family carrying potted flowers up a massive, barren mountain. A world teeming with insects and arachnids, associating into families and societies and nations. A perfectly clear ocean, eerily empty for miles in every direction.

_There are too many places he could be,_ Stan realized. _I need to see more._

_I need to see everything._

The images blurred together as Stan’s head spun faster and faster, but the universe resisted becoming known, writhing and shrinking away from him.

_I NEED TO SEE **EVERYTHING**. I NEED TO SEE **MY BROTHER**._

The projector whirring intensified to a dull roar, as Stanley Pines grabbed existence by the throat and stared at it dead in its eyes.

***

“Shoulda figured the gate would be closed,” Wendy grumbled as they approached Northwest Mansion.

“Well, time to make Stan proud, then.” Dipper pulled a small crossbow out of his backpack, and fired off a few shots. The first bolt sailed harmlessly over the fence, but the second flew true and impaled itself in the security camera, spinning it around so that it pointed away from his party. “You want to lead the way, Mabel?”

“Sure do!” Mabel expertly scaled the gate with her grappling hook, then tossed it through a gap in the bars for Dipper to follow with. “If Pacifica asks, we’ll just tell her that we got lost in tunnels that mole people dug under the fence.”

Wendy shook her head. “First grappling hooks in the gift shop, and now crossbows in the closet? We need to get Stan back just so I can yell at him about leaving weapons where you kids can find them.”

“Hey, you carry an axe everywhere!” Dipper shot back as he landed on the other side of the wall, passing the grappling hook through the gate one last time. “And you’ve got to admit, these weapons come in handy all the time.”

Wendy shrugged. “Yeah, but _I’m_ not a kid. I’m a _responsible teenager_.”

“That’s an oxymoron and we all know it,” Dipper told her as they set off towards the mansion.

“Less of an oxymoron than ‘responsible twelve-year old’ would be.”

“Shh, guys!” Mabel motioned towards a guard rounding the corner, and the three of them ducked into the bushes. Once he’d passed them by, they sprinted towards the front door, only to stand there awkwardly for a moment, unsure of how to proceed.

“Do we… just ring the doorbell?” Wendy asked. “It feels kinda anticlimactic after doing all this cool heist stuff.”

“Is it unlocked?” Dipper gave the door an experimental push, and sure enough, it slid open, revealing a grand ballroom lit by dozens of crystal chandeliers. “I guess we should just head in.”

“Aww, lots of cute animals!” Mabel exclaimed, rushing over to the nearest taxidermied squirrel. “And they must’ve been even more adorable when you were alive — weren’t you, Mister Fluffytail?”

“Why is there so much _gravel_ on the floor?” Wendy muttered, kicking around a few of the jagged chunks of rock that were scattered across the carpet. “I woulda thought the Northwests would take better care of their stuff…” Her eyes followed the trail of gravel and dust across the ballroom, and up the stairs —

And to the balcony from which two Northwests glared down at them, one of looking far more ghostly and petrified than the other.

“Oh,” Dipper whispered. “So _that’s_ what happened to that statue.”

“Dipper? Mabel?” Pacifica gasped. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Don’t worry, we had a really good reason for breaking and entering, I promise!” Mabel spoke up. “See, our grunkle spoke to me in my dreams and said that in order to lift his curse —”

**Dipper and Mabel _Pines_?** Nathaniel Northwest asked as his statue form began to rise up off the ground and out past the balcony. **Oh, how _convenient_!**

“Uh, excuse me?” Dipper asked. “I’ve never met you before, dude —”

The statue plummeted to the ground, smashing through the floorboards and coming just inches away from crushing Dipper as he jumped to the side.

**You don’t even claim to know the very man whose legacy you fouled? I’ve met a lot of petty children in my day, but you put all of them to _shame_!**

“Grandpa, what are you _doing_?!” Pacifica shrieked, covering her mouth with her hands. “Are you trying to _kill_ him?!”

Nathaniel turned back towards her. **Why _wouldn’t_ I try to kill the meddling kids? Is mercilessly eradicating our enemies not the Northwest family _modus operandi_ any longer? I didn’t think times had changed _that_ much!**

“No! It’s _not_! Even my parents or grandparents would never…” Pacifica’s voice trailed off, like she couldn’t help but doubt her own argument.

**Oh, dear naïve granddaughter.** Nathaniel shook his stone head. **I can’t fault you for not knowing _all_ your family’s history yet, but as much as I disagreed with my children, I simply can’t imagine them abandoning such a simple tenet. Nor can I imagine your parents, or your grandparents, or _any_ of your ancestors, for that matter! How do you think we amassed the family fortune in the first place? Because it sure wasn’t by being _kind_, or _charitable_, or —**

He staggered backwards as Mabel’s grappling hook caught him directly in the chest, and cracks began to spiderweb across his beard.

“That’s what you _get_ for attacking my brother! You dumb old capitalist!”

**I am not DUMB!** Nathaniel roared. **The world tried to suppress my genius!**

His beard began to crumble even more, but a whirlwind of black smoke caught the rocky shards and hurled them through the air. Wendy knocked Mabel out of the way with a rolling tackle, then sprung to her feet and raised her axe just in time to deflect Nathaniel’s stone flagpole in place as he swung it at her.

“Pacifica?” Mabel pleaded. “A little help here?!”

“I —” Pacifica took a few hesitant steps down the stairs, and then froze. “I don’t know what to do!”

As Wendy and Nathaniel continued to spar, remaining at more or less a stalemate, Dipper frantically flipped through Journal 3. 

“Come on, come on, I _know_ there’s a whole section about ghosts in here somewhere —”

Nathaniel blew a plume of dust in Wendy’s face, but didn’t strike at her even as she began to cough. Instead, he turned to Dipper, and pointed a chipped stone finger towards the ceiling.

**Searching for my weakness? Now now, we can’t have that!**

Tendrils of smoke wound around the lamps and chandeliers, and their lights faded. Faint sunbeams from an overcast sky still poured into the mansion through the windows, but as the living combatants’ eyes adjusted, they saw Nathaniel’s statue form collapse to the ground, no longer possessed. His smoke-black, ghostly form was nowhere to be seen.

“Gah, it’s too dark!” Wendy cried, wiping dust away from her face. “I can’t see where he went!”

Mabel poked the lightbulb on her sweater. “Don’t worry guys, I got this!”

But nothing happened, even as she kept poking it more and more frantically. “Oh no! I must’ve ran out the batteries while we were in the bunker!”

“Look out!” Dipper shouted, and Mabel narrowly dodged a chair flung at her from behind. She whirled around and fired her grappling hook in the direction it had been thrown from, but it just harmlessly bounced off the edge of a table.

Nathaniel’s voice boomed from all around them. **A lot harder to hide when you can’t see who’s attacking you, isn’t it?**

Wendy picked up the same chair that Nathaniel had thrown, diving in front of Dipper and using it to shield them from a volley of broken lamps and shattered glass. “I don’t know, we still seem to be doing pretty well for ourselves!”

Nathaniel laughed. **And I can’t _wait_ to see how long you’re able to keep that up! It’s a good thing _I_ don’t grow tired like you mortals!**

As Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy stood back to back to fend off a barrage of inanimate objects, Pacifica slid down the stairway banister and made a dash for the closest mounted animal — a ten-point buck, hanging on the wall just low enough for her to reach.

“What are you _doing_?” Dipper yelled as he noticed her pulling out her tweezers. “This is no time for —”

“You can thank me later!” Pacifica shouted back as she plucked a few hairs from the deer’s coat and tossed them into the lantern, then pulled a lighter from her pocket and set the oil ablaze. “Abracadabra!”

The resulting light didn’t quite illuminate the whole ballroom, but still cast a surprisingly far-reaching glow. It turned everything it touched grayscale, except the kids and Wendy, who still looked as brightly colored as ever, and Nathaniel himself — who no longer looked like an amorphous cloud of darkness, but rather an elderly bearded man, floating in the air and glowing a bright, impossible-to-miss shade of blue.

For a few seconds, he just stared at the transparent hands of his true form, until finally his eyes landed on Pacifica, bearing the lantern he himself had created over a century ago.

**Young lady,** he finally spluttered, **what do you think you’re _doing_?!**

Pacifica stared him down.

“I thought you were a kindred spirit,” she began softly. “I thought you were different from all the other Northwests… like me. But you’re really exactly the same as the rest of them after all, and…”

**BLASPHEMY!**

“And that’s not something I want to have in common with you!”

**You want to betray your own ancestor? You want to be _disowned_?!**

Pacifica flinched, her grip on the lantern tightening.

“You go, girl!” Mabel spoke up. “Tell him who’s boss!”

Pacifica whirled around, mouth hanging agape. “You really mean that?”

To her surprise, Dipper cheered her on too. “You heard Mabel! Give him a piece of your mind!”

“You’re not so bad after all, rich girl!” Wendy swung her axe through the air. “Don’t worry, we’ll back you up!”

Pacifica took a deep breath.

**You can’t be serious! **Nathaniel shouted. **My granddaughter would never throw her lot in with you _commoners_ —**

“Thanks for letting me know how your lantern worked, Grandpa,” Pacifica interrupted with a smile. “I’m going to help to help these nerds exorcise you now.”

***

A fine mist of subatomic particles condensed on Stan’s glasses, then pooled into iridescent newborn dimensions. They dripped off the glass one by one, and fell into the spiral of foam rotating beneath him, ready to embark on eons-long journeys of existence. 

For a fraction of a second, Stan considered looking away, but the thought escaped nearly as quickly as it had occurred to him — after all, he knew in the back of his mind that he wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes away even if he wanted to.

There was such diversity in the structure of the worlds, from the liquid droplets to the solid ice crystals to the bubbles of negative space in the foam. It was so much to take in, so much that you’d _think_ it would destroy the mind of someone like Stan — but if anything, it was a comfort to behold, a reassurance to see how tiny and insignificant every tiny sliver of existence was on its own despite how massive and all-encompassing and _significant_ they all became together.

_Do not forget,_ an echoing voice sung in his ear, _that you are also significant all on your own — perhaps not to the grand scheme of existence itself, but certainly to many of the people you share this existence with. _

Stan rubbed his head. “Wait, what?”

_This place encapsulates everywhere and nowhere, for now and forever. Anyone who can make their way out here, to this place no mortals are meant to see, can surely make a difference in the little droplet of reality they reside in._

“Um… thanks? I guess?”

Stan couldn’t _see_ the entity smile, but he sensed it nonetheless.

_You have done something extraordinary, Stan. But do not let that distract you from what you came here for._

“What I came here for? I… _shit_, I was looking for _Ford_! How — how long have I _been_ here? How much time have I wasted when I could’ve been trying to _find_ him?!”

_Worry not. Your bond with your twin is strong, and that bond will guide you to him as long as you put your faith in it._

Stan nodded slowly, and closed his eyes. 

“Ford never gives up,” he reminded himself out loud, “which means he’s still out there, still fighting and _surviving_. He’s my brother, and I _will_ find him, because _I_ don’t give up either.”

He let a wave of sensations and emotions from a trillion different worlds wash over him, but it didn’t carry him off his feet this time, and he wasn’t overwhelmed and hypnotized by it.

_Follow whatever feels most familiar,_ the voice told him. _And above all else, trust yourself._

There were too many familiar sensations from the multiverse to count — too many advanced math problems and leather-bound journals and trench coats and broken glasses. And others still, things that were so tragically Ford that they _ached_ — broken inventions and angry parting words and loaded crossbows and bloodshot eyes…

But nothing struck Stan harder than the bittersweet nostalgia.

It was distant and fleeting, like someone’s not-quite-lucid dream as they began to toss and turn and awaken; it was warm like a beach on a summer day while stinging like a splinter from a recently sanded wooden plank, and it _resonated_. It wasn’t a feeling Stan had ever expected to come from _Ford_, of all people — but it was so _familiar_, like a dream that could’ve sprung from his very own head.

“That’s it,” he whispered, and a light pink tail materialized beneath his feet, guiding him forward as he dove towards the droplet of reality that held his brother.

_Thank you, whoever you are,_ he thought to the entity, and even though he hadn’t spoken out loud, something told him the message had been received.

He held his nonexistent breath as images materialized around him — a damp cave, an extinguished campfire, a black sleeping bag…

And sure enough, there was Ford, sitting upright and rubbing his eyes like he’d just woken up. There was Ford, _alive_.

_“You’re okay!”_ Stan whispered, not even caring that Ford being awake meant he wouldn’t be able to communicate. _“Oh my god. I mean, I knew you would be, but — holy shit, Ford. I really will be able to bring you home, won’t I?”_

Ford rolled up his sleeping bag and stuffed it into a larger bag of supplies, which he slung over his back alongside a giant, rectangular case that presumably housed some kind of weapon. He marched towards the mouth of the cave, through which rays of morning light were beginning to peek, but then paused for a moment, and rifled through the inside pocket of his coat to procure something.

Stan floated closer to get a better look, only to freeze in place as he recognized the item — a photograph of two boys standing on a boat, with proud smiles on their faces despite the broken hull and tattered sails.

_“You kept that picture?”_ he whispered.

Ford sighed and tucked the photograph back in his pocket, then looked up to stare suspiciously at the exact spot where Stan floated — and for just a moment Stan would’ve sworn that Ford could see him.

But then Ford shook his head and stepped past Stan, out of the cave and into the morning sun. As he adjusted the strap holding his weapon, he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “it won’t be long.”

_“You can count on that, Sixer. It won’t be long at all.”_

As Ford set off, Stan closed his eyes and concentrated on the familiar elements of the multiverse once again. 

_“Man, this took a lot longer than I expected, didn’t it?”_ he whispered. _“I hope those kids haven’t broken into any mansions without me.”_

***

“Pacifica, above you!” Dipper shouted, just in time for Pacifica to dodge a massive chandelier that came crashing to the ground. Nathaniel dove back into the statue, possessing it once again as he took a swing at Pacifica with a crumbling arm, and Pacifica lost her grip on the lantern as she ducked, sending it clattering across the hardwood floor as the light flickered and began to fade.

“Oh no you don’t!” Mabel jumped onto Nathaniel’s back from behind him, covering his eyes as Dipper snatched the lantern up off the ground and held it upright as the flame roared back to life. Pacifica pulled out a nail file and threw it with uncanny precision, knocking one of Nathaniel’s already crumbling fingers clear off of his flag-bearing hand.

**Oh no YOU don’t!** Nathaniel roared back as his other hand detached from his body, plucking Mabel off his back by the scruff of her sweater and hurling her towards the mounted head of a massive elk. She narrowly avoided being impaled on most of its antlers, but one single point pierced through her sweater just above her shoulder and ensnared her in place.

“Hang tight, Mabel!” Wendy shouted, taking a swing at the animal’s neck, but she failed to notice the detached stone fist swing around once again — first clocking her in the shoulder and making her drop her axe, and then grabbing Dipper by the throat and pinning him to the ground. 

“Shit!” Wendy gasped. “Let him go, you bastard!”

Nathaniel advanced towards the lantern, blasting Pacifica backwards with a cloud of smoke and dust from his stump hand while raising his flagpole over his head in preparation to strike Dipper.

**Give me the lantern, Pines,** he growled. **Or —**

“How about I give you an ass-kicking instead?!” Stan’s ghost rose up from within the floor like a blazing blue lightning bolt, and in the same fluid motion, he delivered an uppercut to Nathaniel’s chin that knocked his spectral form clear out of the statue and twenty feet straight into the air.

“You want a fucking ghost fight?! ‘Cause I’ll _give_ you a ghost fight!” Stan crowed, flexing incorporeal arms. “I got my ghost brass knuckles right here!”

“Grunkle Stan?!” Mabel gasped. “How did you do that?”

Stan whirled around to face her. “Wait, you can see me? Fuck, I really shouldn’t be swearing then, should I?”

Dipper got to his feet, the stone hand having relaxed its grip around his throat. “It’s the magic lantern, I think. It reveals all the ghosts in range of its light.”

“And it used to be Grandpa Granite’s own magic lantern at that,” Pacifica scoffed. “Talk about irony!”

“Ha, Grandpa Granite!” Stan laughed. “That’s pretty good!”

Nathaniel slunk out of the lantern’s range, where he transformed back into a ghost made of smoke and ashes, but his eyes were glowing such a firey orange that everyone could still make out where he was.

“Quick, kids!” Stan commanded. “Get behind me!”

Mabel tugged at her sweater, still caught on the elk’s antlers. “I can’t! I’m stuck!”

An orange smile flickered on Nathaniel’s face, and he leapt back into the light towards Mabel.

“Don’t you dare!” Stan shouted, diving forward at superhuman speed to meet him, knocking him off balance with a left hook before jabbing a knee into his groin. Nathaniel howled and aimed a blow at Stan’s head, but Stan jumped out of the way with ease, then kicked Nathaniel’s legs out from underneath him and sent him tumbling to the floor.

“I’m guessing you didn’t take boxing lessons as a kid, did you?” Stan asked smugly. “I never thought I’d tell this to a ghost that doesn’t weigh anything, but somehow, you’re putting too much of your weight into your punches.”

**So this is how you want to fight?** Nathaniel hissed. **Too bad my quarrel isn’t with you.**

His hand swept up a pile of jagged porcelain shards, and with a blast of ghostly smoke, fired them in a volley towards Mabel. Stan dove in the way to intercept, but they passed straight through him, and Mabel barely extricated herself from the antlers in time to dodge.

_I can beat him to a pulp, but I can’t affect the physical world enough keep my kids safe from him while I do. They’re the ones he wants revenge on._ Stan realized. _I’ve got to make _myself_ his main target, somehow. Or…_

An idea occurred to him that was so dumb he couldn’t help but grin, and Nathaniel glared at him.

**What’s so funny? Are you excited to watch your family die?**

Stan ignored him, struggling to stifle a laugh. It was a horrible, risky, completely harebrained idea, and it was _exactly_ what he needed.

“HEY, BILL CIPHER!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “I NEED TO TALK TO YOU!”

The room fell dead silent as the tapestry behind Stan lit up with a flash of golden light. It depicted a gray, one-eyed triangle looming over two pleading silhouettes surrounded by red and orange flames — but as a cold wind blew through the ballroom, the figures began to write in agony as the flames lit up blue.

Bill cackled as he opened his eye and casually stepped out of the tapestry like it was something he did every day. “Well, well, _well_! We meet again, Stanley! Finally ready to make a deal?”

“Oh, hell no!” Stan replied, pulling his 8-ball cane out of thin air to make an overdramatic gesture in Nathaniel Northwest’s direction. “I just thought there was someone here who you might like to reunite with. For old times’ sake, you know?”

**YOU!** Nathaniel howled. **YOU DOUBLE-CROSSED ME AND LEFT ME TO ROT!**

The cockiness deflated out of Bill’s pose as his eye went wide. “Hey now, let’s not jump to conclusions here! Give me a chance to tell _my_ side of the story —”

Nathaniel lunged forward and grabbed ahold of Bill, seething with such an overwhelming rage that his whole body lit up firey and orange. **YOU ARE NO MUSE! GO TO HELL, YOU TREACHEROUS AFFRONT AGAINST INSPIRATION!**

Bill fired back with a blast of blue fire, but he looked shaken. “Alright, FINE! My side of the story is that I DESPISE you and every single atom that’s ever passed through your BODY!”

“Fight, fight, FIGHT!” Stan chanted. “Kids, get the camera!”

“FUCK YOU!” Bill shouted at Stan, only for Nathaniel to seize the opening and punch him directly in the eye. They continued to tussle, tumbling out of range of the lantern’s light, and Stan flew after them, disappearing from the kids’ view.

“I am _so_ confused right now,” Dipper muttered.

“Stan knows what he’s doing,” Mabel assured him. “Probably.”

**DIE, FOUL BEAST! **Nathaniel roared, but Bill caught his fist in midair, and Nathaniel screamed as bolts of blue electricity surged up his arm.

Stan seized the opportunity, floating up behind Nathaniel and tapping his wrist, where a silver watch resembling the portal appeared. The clock’s hands whirled around the inner circle unnaturally fast, and Stan put on his cockiest grin as he raised his wrist for Bill to see.

_“Remember, only nine more hours until we BOTH lose everything!”_

The lightning bolts sparking from Bill’s hands shorted out.

_“Speak for yourself!”_ he shouted, voice jumping up to an even higher pitch than usual._ “I DON’T need —”_

Nathaniel slammed his head into Bill, knocking him backwards and through the staircase.

_“But of course you can keep wasting your time letting Cowboy Casper here beat you to a pulp,”_ Stan jeered._ “I don’t mind waiting!”_

Bill flew back out of the stairway, his whole body crackling with electricity as he summoned a vortex of fire around Nathaniel, trapping him in place — but Bill’s eye stayed fixed on Stan, even as Nathaniel thrashed and howled and cursed.

_“If you want the portal on so badly, then just shake my hand, you idiot!”_ Bill shrieked. _“I really don’t know how to make this any simpler for you!”_

_“If _you_ really hate Old Man Northwest so much, then you should just trap him in the mirror and let me go for no price — because that handshake? That deal? That’s _never_ happening, Cipher,”_ Stan shot back._ “Go ahead, call my bluff! Wait out the last nine hours, and watch thirty years of biding your time go to waste! I’m sure you know exactly what a petty, stubborn asshole my brother can be, so let me give you one last warning before you make a choice you regret — I’m just as petty and stubborn as he is!”_

Bill’s whole body lit up red as he slowly pointed one index finger at Stan, and fired another blast of blue flames —

  
  
  
  


And Stan sat up in his hospital bed with Bill floating over him, looking angrier than it ever should’ve been possible for any two-dimensional object to look.

_“This isn’t over, Fez!”_ he hissed. _“I’ll still get exactly what I need from you sooner or later, one way or another!”_

“So you _finally_ admit that I’m useful to you, too!” Stan gloated. His voice was hoarse, but he didn’t care. “I figured you’d come around soon enough!”

_“You have NO IDEA how lucky you are that I need you alive! I would let you rot in that mirror FOREVER if I could!”_

Stan stretched his arms, giving each of his biceps a celebratory kiss. “Ahh, I missed these bad boys! How’s it feel not to have a body, Bill? If only you hadn’t made it so goddamn _obvious_ that you still needed me, I might’ve even given in and agreed to let you borrow mine!”

Bill vanished without any fanfare or even one final threat, leaving Stan alone in the hospital room with a recently-awoken and _extremely_ confused Soos.

“Mr. Pines?” he gasped. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, more or less,” Stan assured him. “Plan A didn’t go so great, but Plan B worked like a charm.”

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Soos cried, wrapping Stan in an uncomfortably tight hug. “But who were you just talking to? I didn’t see anyone else in the room…”

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Stan told him. “Right now, I need you to call Wendy and the kids for me, ‘cause I vanished before their eyes just a couple minutes ago and they’re probably worried out of their minds.”

“Shh, not yet.” Soos wiped his eyes. “Just give me ten more seconds of hugging you and sobbing first.”

Stan sighed. “Alright, I suppose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <s>Poor Bill, wasting such a dramatic entrance on a scene where he got completely and utterly dunked on.</s> And there we have it, the conclusion of the main story! There’s still an epilogue coming to tie up the wide variety of loose ends I’ve created here, so keep an eye out for that sometime in November, if all goes according to plan!
> 
> Comments/kudos/[reblogs](https://anistarrose.tumblr.com/post/188663072786/to-see-the-unseen-ch-4-gravity-falls) are appreciated!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan has a lot of explaining to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we’ve reached the (extremely long) epilogue!

Mabel barged into Stan’s hospital room, Dipper and Wendy hot on her heels, and threw her arms around his shoulders.

“You’re awake! We got so worried once you and Bill disappeared in the mansion —”

“How did you _do_ it, Grunkle Stan?” Dipper asked, joining in on the hug. “Once you flew away from the lantern, we couldn’t see anything that happened —”

“Hey, let’s take it one thing at a time, okay? And loosen your grip, will you? I can’t answer your questions when you’re squeezing the air out of my lungs.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Dipper withdrew from the hug, and a moment later, Mabel did so as well.

Stan laughed, pulling down the brim of Dipper’s hat to cover his eyes. “I’m just messing with you, kid — I’m not _that_ old and frail yet. But first things first, what happened to Old Man Northwest? He’s not still out trying to kill you, is he?”

“No, he’s not,” Pacifica spoke up. She stood awkwardly by the door, averting her eyes towards the floor as she pulled the mirror out of her pocket. “About a minute after we lost track of you, the mirror lit up blue, and now… well, you probably get why I don’t want to open it up any more times than I have to, but the portrait shows his face now. I checked, back in the mansion.”

“Yeah, I figured he got trapped again,” Stan muttered. “Serves that jerk right.”

“You guys probably know how to get rid of something like this better than I would. I guess you should take it.” Pacifica gingerly handed the mirror over to Dipper, then turned to leave, but she paused as she opened the door.

“Um, Mr. Pines? I saw you unconscious in the woods — and I guess you must’ve seen me too, now that I think about it — but I didn’t do anything to help you, and I’m… I’m so sorry about that. I should’ve realized you were in trouble and _told_ someone, instead of just taking the mirror back and running off —”

“It’s water under the bridge, kid,” Stan assured her. “And even if I wasn’t so forgiving, I’ve made a _lot_ more dumb decisions than you have in the past twenty-four hours, so I’d be a hypocrite to judge you for it. Just don’t let me ever catch you bribing partygoers at the Mystery Shack ever again, and we’re even. Bribery is _my_ job, you see?”

Pacifica finally made eye contact with him, expression completely deadpan. “You really should stick to bribery instead of cursed artifacts. It sounds a lot lower-risk.”

Stan laughed. “You know what? I think I like you after all, kid.”

Pacifica smiled. “Well, uh… I’ll see you guys around, I guess?”

“We should go mini-golfing sometime!” Mabel suggested. “I’ve been meaning to do that all summer, and now we have an extra friend to go with!”

“Well, right now I should really be figuring out how to explain the, uh, destroyed ballroom situation to my parents, but… yeah, I’d like to do that someday. I mean, I _know_ I’ll win, but something tells me you’d be a worthy opponent.”

Stan pointed two finger guns at her. “If you need a forged note from an authority figure to throw your parents off the trail, then you know who to call.”

Pacifica tried and failed to stifle a laugh as she left the room, and nearly bumped into a nurse who was pushing a cart through the hallway.

“You didn’t make any deals with Bill, did you?” Dipper asked Stan in a hushed voice once Pacifica and all medical personnel were out of earshot. 

“What kind of idiot do you take me for? Of _course_ I didn’t cut a deal with the evil triangle! He might not turn on me at the first opportunity, or the second, or even the third, but sooner or later he’d find a way to stab me in the back, and then where would I be? Not around to protect you guys from people like him, that’s for sure.”

“Then how did you get back in your body?”

Stan sighed. _Shit, how do I explain this without saying anything incriminating…_

He settled on a vague, simplified version of the truth. “Look, I’m a con artist, right? That’s no secret — but the thing is, Bill’s a con artist too, and I could tell that from the first time I heard him speak. I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with guys like him, and I can read his type like the back of my hand — I _knew_ that he still wanted something from me that I could only do if I was alive, so… I told him I was fine getting trapped in the mirror, and he didn’t have the guts to call my bluff.”

“Holy shit,” Wendy blurted out. “Stan, did you outplay a literal trickster god?”

Stan shrugged. “Well, when you put it like that, it sounds a lot more impressive than it really was…”

“I’m not saying that getting back in your body was a bad idea,” Dipper spoke up slowly, “because I don’t know what we’d do without you, Grunkle Stan, but… aren’t you still worried about playing into Bill’s hands? Do you even know _what_ he needs from you? What if you end up helping him without even realizing it?”

“No,” Stan lied. “I never figured out what he wanted me to do.”

It was far from the most brazen lie he’d ever told the kids, but with their worried eyes boring into him and their dusty, recently-bruised hands clinging to his hospital gown like they were still afraid of losing him, it stung more than it should have.

_Pull yourself together, Stanley,_ he thought to himself. _If they learned that you’re still planning to do exactly what Bill wants, there’s no way they’d just sit back and let you get away with it…_

_Or would they? If they knew _why_ you need to turn the portal on again?_

Dipper opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted as the doctor entered the hospital room — and so the topic of Bill was forgotten, for a time.

***

It took a few tests and a _lot_ of lying by omission to medical professionals, but Stan was cleared to leave the hospital early that evening. Soos drove the whole gang back to the Mystery Shack, taking a quick detour to pick up pizza for dinner, and they devoured almost all of it in the truck before even getting home.

Dipper lay down on Stan’s chair with Journal 3, rereading its lone legible entry on Bill Cipher, while Mabel sat at his feet, clacking her knitting needles together in a comfortingly familiar rhythm as she started a new sweater.

“What are you going to do with that mirror?” she asked. “Throw it in the Bottomless Pit?”

“I was thinking about burying it really deep… maybe even in one of the bunker’s tunnels, for good measure. I guess we’d have to explain to Stan how we know about the bunker, but —”

“Ahem!” Stan coughed into his fist as he entered the room, and Dipper jumped.

“Oh! I didn’t see you there! Uh, Mabel and I were just saying —”

“I’ve already heard about the bunker, kid,” Stan told him, setting down an old, dusty briefcase that Dipper didn’t recognize. “I don’t have the full story, but I don’t think I want it, ‘cause I’ve already been through a lot today and if you tell me how close you came to dying in there I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

Dipper grimaced. “Are you… mad?”

Stan looked away. “We need… we need to _talk_ about that journal, Dipper. When I was all disembodied and invisible, I overheard you say that you were looking for the other volumes…”

“I _know_ the Journals are dangerous, you don’t have to tell me again!” Dipper blurted out. “But you said I could use it for self-defense, and — and — and I was just desperate for a way to help you! I didn’t know what happened to you and I didn’t know any other place to find the answer besides the other books! _Please_ don’t confiscate it, I promise I’ll never —”

Stan held up a hand. “Whoa, slow down. I’m not going to confiscate it. I just… I need you to promise you can keep a secret for me.” He looked around the room, from Dipper and Mabel to Wendy to Soos. “I need _all_ of you to promise me that you won’t repeat this to anyone — not to your families, not to your friends, and _definitely_ not to the cops.”

Dipper and Mabel exchanged a worried glance, but when they turned back to Stan, they nodded solemnly. Wendy zipped her lips, and Soos put his hand over his heart.

“Okay, now that that’s settled…” Stan took a deep breath, and then turned around and kneeled in front of his briefcase as he unlocked it and pulled out the contents. “Dipper, I figured you might want to take a look at these.” 

He stood up, Journal 1 in his left hand and Journal 2 in his right, and Dipper’s jaw dropped.

“YOU had them all along?!”

“Shhh, not so loud!” Stan dropped Journal 1 in Dipper’s lap and pressed a finger to his lips. “Do you want the whole town to overhear?!”

Dipper picked up the book gingerly, the way one might handle a fragile relic or a ticking time bomb. 

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” he asked in a quieter voice.

“For the same reasons I’ve lied to you about a lot of things, kid,” Stan admitted softly. “Most of all, because these books are _dangerous_, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you getting hurt because of some dumb idea they put in your head… like, I dunno, maybe getting turned into a ghost and almost having to make a deal with a demon all because you read about a cursed mirror and tried to use it to scry for the author of the journals.”

Everyone just _stared_ at Stan, at a loss for words.

“And no, that wasn’t a hypothetical,” Stan added.

“That’s how you got stuck in a coma?” Wendy gasped.

“You’re looking for the Author too?” Dipper blurted out.

“I’m sorry, Dipper. For lying, for being too hard on you, for being a hypocrite about not looking for trouble with the journals. But you kids…”

Stan broke eye contact, staring down towards the ground. “You kids would get along with the Author. You’re both so much like him, in your own weird ways — and I don’t know what I’d _do_ with myself if I let what happened to him happen to you.”

Journal 1 slowly slid out of Dipper’s lap, toppling onto the floor.

“You knew him?” Dipper asked quietly.

Stan picked up the journal, staring down his face reflected on the cover. “Ford was my twin brother. Your other great-uncle.”

Mabel and Dipper both started to say something at once, but Stan cut them off. “I’m guessing you never knew about him, ‘cause the family doesn’t talk about it a whole lot. It’s… it’s complicated, but there _is_ a good reason for that. It’s just too hard to explain right now.”

“I had no idea,” Mabel whispered. “I thought we were the only twins…”

“Oh my god, Stan, I’m so sorry.” Dipper buried his head in his hands. “This whole summer I’ve been running around looking for mysteries and monsters and doing the same things the Author used to do — but this whole time, that was how you lost your brother! I made you watch that all over again —”

“He’s not lost for good,” Stan corrected him. “I _found_ him with the mirror — I _know_ he’s still alive — and I’m going to get him back here, safe and sound.”

The stares and the stunned silence returned for a few long seconds, before Soos finally spoke up:

“If you found him, then… where _is_ he that you couldn’t see without the mirror?”

“That’s a good question.” Stan motioned towards the gift shop. “I need to show you one last thing, and then this will all make a lot more sense, okay?”

After closing the windows and double-checking to make sure the door was locked, Stan punched in the code, and Dipper smacked his head as he watched the vending machine swing open to reveal the secret passage. 

“You were hiding this in plain sight all along…”

“This is just the tip of the iceberg of secret rooms, kid,” Stan warned him as he led the way down the stairs. “It only gets crazier, so trust me when I tell you I didn’t design any of this except the vending machine.”

The elevator shuddered more than usual as it began to move, and Stan had a brief moment of panic when he realized he’d never ridden in it with four other people all at once — but little more than a single anxiety-ridden minute later, it reached the basement safely. 

“Don’t touch anything except the floor, and _definitely_ don’t open any doors,” Stan ordered as the doors opened and they stepped into the lab. “That means you, Dipper. I still don’t know what a couple of the control panels do, and we don’t need to find out now.”

“This is incredible!” Dipper exclaimed, turning from the fuel tanks to the periscope to Stan’s desk and the main control panel. “Did your brother build this whole thing himself?”

“I think he had some help, but I was never really sure on the details,” Stan fibbed. He _was_ pretty sure Bill had designed the bulk of the portal, if not the entire room’s setup, but it wasn’t his place to reveal Ford’s secrets like that.

“What’s that machine behind the doors?” Soos asked. “Why’s it blocked off like that? Is it dangerous?”

“It’s an interdimensional portal,” Stan explained. “A hole punched straight through spacetime itself —”

He shivered. _Damn, that’s almost verbatim what Ford told me all those years ago, isn’t it?_

“You’re kidding!” Dipper practically pressed his face right up against the window, staring at the portal as its lights flickered on and off. “I can’t believe this was right under our feet the whole summer! Where does it lead?”

“I don’t know what’s on the other end,” Stan admitted. “I just know that’s where Ford is. And in another week or two, it’ll be fully calibrated, and I’ll finally be able to get him back.”

“He fell through?” Wendy asked, and Stan nodded.

“But… the Author’s been missing for _decades_,” Dipper said. “Your brother’s been alone in an alien world all this time?”

Stan nodded again. “It’s been just over thirty years. That’s why I dug up the mirror, because the second journal said it could be used for scrying, and I… I needed to see for myself that Ford was okay. Even though his journal also said the mirror was ridiculously dangerous, I — I just couldn’t wait any longer.”

“Grunkle Stan, that was the dumbest thing you’ve ever done, and I’ve watched you get arrested for trying to shoplift an entire freezer full of toaster waffles from the grocery store,” Mabel told him. “But I would’ve done the same if you or Dipper was stuck in another dimension. I think all of us would.”

“Thank you, pumpkin.” Stan put a hand on Mabel’s shoulder. “Let’s just hope you never have to.”

***

Ford staggered onto a solid surface, squinting through his goggles as blinding bolts of electricity flew past him. His ears rang and his head ached from the grenade he’d used to launch himself through the portal, but he managed to stay standing upright as the light faded away and he found himself in a familiar basement.

_I was so damn _close_! I could’ve saved the entire multiverse, but Stanley had to go and reopen the portal _now_ of all times —_

“Grunkle Stan, is that him?” A youthful voice jarred Ford out of his thoughts, and as two short figures rushed towards him, he pulled off his goggles to get a better look.

“It really _is_ him!” a boy with a pine tree cap exclaimed. Much to Ford’s shock, he pulled one of Ford’s own journals out of his vest, and held it up for Ford to see like it somehow would explain everything about this utterly bizarre situation. “I’ve been waiting to meet you all summer! I can’t believe you’re finally here!”

“We’ve heard so much about you!” a girl in a sweater added, knocking the air out of Ford’s lungs with a surprisingly tight hug. “Grunkle Stan told us you like science so I knitted you a sweater with the periodic table on it! It’s upstairs right now but I can go get it if you want!”

The boy shot rapid-fire questions at Ford, clicking a pen anxiously like he was ready to take notes. “What was the other side of the portal like? Does time pass at the same rate in that dimension as it does over here? Did you ever meet any aliens?”

“I, um… of course I’d be happy to talk about aliens and try on sweaters _later_, but could we slow down for a minute?” Ford stammered. “First of all, who exactly _are_ you two, and —”

“Yeah, give him some time to get adjusted, okay kids?”

Ford tensed as he heard the voice, fighting the simultaneous impulses to laugh, cry, and curse. 

There was Stan, standing not ten feet away from him and wearing a suit, tie, and slightly squashed fez. His hair had gone gray even grayer than Ford’s had, and behind his glasses, his eyes looked wet. 

As began to address Ford, rather than the kids, his voice grew more hesitant, and he started to stumble over his words. “It’s so good to — to see you again, Ford. I — I can’t believe you’re finally back with us…”

Ford, for his part, struggled to form a coherent sentence even more than Stan did and simply neglected to say anything, causing an awkward pause as he and Stan stared each other down.

“Well, what are you two waiting for?” the girl spoke up after a moment. “Go hug your twins already! Like this —”

She delivered another tackle-hug, this time to her brother.

“Oof! Mabel, I’m sure they know how hugging works —”

Stan slowly put an arm over Ford’s shoulder, and noticed Ford flinch.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” Stan asked him, in a hushed but anxious whisper. “You’ve been really quiet —”

“I’m fine.” _Change the subject, change the subject, change the damn subject already Stanford —_ “Are these… your grandkids?”

Stan managed a laugh. “Mabel and Dipper? Nah, they’re Shermie’s. You’ll get along great with them once they stop fawning over you like excited puppies, don’t worry.”

He gestured towards the basement’s other two occupants, a red-haired teenager in a lumberjack hat and a young man in a question-mark T-shirt. “And these are my employees, Soos and Wendy.”

Wendy finger-gunned at him. “What’s up, Stan Two?” 

Soos waved enthusiastically. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Pines!” 

Ford sighed. “Stanley, how many people have you told about this portal?”

“Just this group,” Stan assured him quickly. “The FBI might’ve also known, as of earlier this morning, but Dipper did some weird scifi stuff and wiped their memories, so, uh, just don’t worry about —”

“He WHAT?”

Dipper sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “It was in self-defense! Arguably…”

Ford shook his head. “You know what, we’ll unpack the implications of that later. For now, I need a few hours alone with the portal to assess the damage.” _And maybe to have a brief existential crisis in the privacy of my basement._ “You should all head upstairs.”

“And _then_ you’ll be ready to try on your new sweater and tell us where you’ve been all this time?” Mabel asked.

“What? Oh, uh… yes, of course. I’ll see you… what time is it, late afternoon? I’ll see you this evening, then. Now, hurry along!”

“Okay, Great-Uncle Ford,” Dipper replied without much enthusiasm. “See you soon, then…”

Stan lagged behind as the others as they filed into the elevator.

“Please don’t disappoint the kids,” he whispered as he passed Ford. “They’ve been so excited to finally meet you…”

“You haven’t told them about the argument, have you,” Ford said. It wasn’t a question as much as it was an accusation.

Stan looked like he was about to say something, but then decided against it, opting just to nod before stepping through the elevator doors.

***

Ford was presented with so much new information over the next few hours, some of it horrifying and some of it pleasantly surprising, that he was tempted to take one of his old journals and start keeping a list. He opted against it, because such a list would wind up full of things he wouldn’t want any nosey relatives like Dipper reading, but if he _had_ jotted those revelations down, they might’ve looked something like this:

**1.** Stanley must’ve single-handedly caused a duct tape shortage throughout all of Oregon, considering how much he used to hold the portal together.

**2.** Stan has a photo of his great-niblings on <strike>his</strike> my desk, along with a variety of textbooks like “Quantum Physics For Dummies.” He also apparently kept my custom-made gloves, even though they obviously don’t fit him. Was he really too cheap to purchase his own pair?

**3.** As I feared, the portal has produced a rift, which I secured as fast as I could. It’s currently stable and locked away, but I worry that the containment unit’s structural integrity will be compromised by continued exposure. Must find a way to seal it more permanently — journey to CSO?

**4.** Mabel based the measurements for her sweater on Stan, so it was naturally made to accommodate a larger gut than the one I have, but it’s still very comfy. <strike>The turtleneck is just high enough to hide embarrassing tattoos.</strike> She’s currently knitting a smaller, matching “nerd sweater” for Dipper.

**5.** While I was in the basement, Stan made “Stan-Cakes” for dinner. Concerningly, he joked about there being hair in them, but they’re actually not that bad — at least, compared to the meager meals I often had to live on while wandering the multiverse.

** <strike>6.</strike> ** <strike> Stan also gave me a giant bag of jellybeans that he’d bought, which is a genuinely nice gesture. Maybe I</strike>

<strike>****</strike>**7.** STAN HAS STOLEN MY IDENTITY AND TURNED MY RESEARCH LAB INTO A MOCKERY OF EVERYTHING IT ONCE STOOD FOR

**8.** I tried not to act too angry over it, for the kids’ sake. They’re strangely invested in Stan and I having a good relationship full of hugs and only the most good-natured of sibling insults. Why couldn’t Stan have just told them the truth and made this simpler for all of us?

<strike>****</strike>**9.** Dipper knows how to play DD&MD! Apparently Stan told him a week or so ago that I enjoy “nerd games,” and he went and prepared a whole campaign! I need to focus on better securing the rift, but I’m sure I’ll be able to set aside a few hours to play over the next few days.

**10.** Dipper has apparently idolized me ever since reading my journals, before Stan even told him an abbreviated version of the truth and he learned I was family. <strike>He wouldn’t be so enthusiastic to play tabletop games with me if only he knew why I made the portal</strike>

<strike>****</strike>**11.** Mabel asked if there are any pictures of Stan and me as kids. Stan replied, very quietly, that he’d found several such photo albums in my study. I immediately excused myself from the table and headed to my room.

**12.** My old room is Stanley’s room now. Of course it is.

I can’t handle this any longer! The kids should be going to bed soon, and the second they’re out of earshot, I’m going to confront Stanley about all of this. There are things that NEED to be to be said, sooner or later.

***

“Just spit it out, Ford.”

“Spit what out?”

“You’ve been standing there, clearly about to say something but then _not_ saying it, for at least a whole minute.” Stan sat down in one of the kitchen chairs, rolling the rag he’d been wiping the table with into a ball and hurling it into the sink. 

“Just let me _have_ it already!” he went on. “I’m not an idiot, and I can tell you’re clearly still mad at me and only getting madder the more you hear about the past thirty years, so just _say_ it! Tell me all about how you’ll never forgive me, much less thank me for saving your life!”

“You didn’t save anyone.” Ford spoke without knowing where the words were coming from, without knowing whether they felt too harsh, or not harsh enough. “Before you dragged me back into this dimension, I was poised to destroy one of the most brutal dictators in the multiverse — a being with a personal vendetta against me, and his sights set on tearing apart our dimension as a whole! But you ignored all my warnings and reactivated the portal, creating a rift that could’ve easily allowed him into our world, had I gone a few more minutes without noticing it! It _still_ might allow him into our world, if the containment unit breaks!”

Stan didn’t make eye contact. “Well, _pardon me_ for not being up to date on the news about alien dictators…”

Ford ignored him. “For all you knew, I could’ve died decades ago! You would’ve put our whole dimension in jeopardy for nothing, and then where would —”

“No,” Stan interrupted. “I knew you weren’t dead.”

“Stanley, if you try and justify nearly tearing apart spacetime with some scientifically unsound bullshit about a magical ‘twin connection,’ I swear —”

“No, it’s not that.” Stan finally met Ford’s eyes, a nervous look on his face. “You’re probably not gonna be thrilled to hear this, but… look, I made a really dumb mistake, but I _fixed_ it, so just don’t freak out, okay?”

“Stanley, what did you _do_?!”

“Okay, so first and foremost, I _didn’_t make any deals with demons, I swear. And I know that sounds like a real suspicious thing to deny, but it’s gonna be relevant in a second and I wanted to get it out of the way.”

Ford collapsed into the chair across the table from Stan, burying his head in his hands. “I can already tell I’m going to hate everything about this story, but it can’t possibly be worse than _not knowing_ why you had to start with that kind of disclaimer, so… go on. Get it over with.”

“In your second journal,” Stan began, “you wrote about a mirror…”

He explained the whole story to Ford, from getting trapped in the mindscape to traveling through the multiverse to defending the kids from Nathaniel Northwest.

“Dipper and Mabel buried the mirror somewhere in the woods,” Stan finally concluded. “Unlike you, they didn’t write down where. We all figured it was probably for the best this way.”

“I can’t believe this,” Ford finally managed after a long period of silence. “You outplayed _Bill Cipher_. The chessmaster himself.”

Stan shrugged. “Eh, chessmaster’s kinda generous. I get the feeling he doesn’t spend a lot of time dealing with other con artist types. The second he ran into some _other_ asshole who made a living by just lying and cheating and riding on other people’s coattails, all his plans started falling apart.”

_Lying and cheating and riding on other people’s coattails… where have I heard that before?_ It was unlike Stan — or at least, unlike the Stan that Ford remembered — to admit something like that so openly, even if it it was partly true. And Stan had spoken those words with such _loathing_ in his voice — a loathing that might’ve been partly directed at Bill, but didn’t exactly exonerate himself, either.

_But Stan is only superficially similar to Bill, when it comes down to it,_ Ford realized. _Bill can and will lie about _everything_, but Stan, for all his faults, is perfectly honest when he tells us and shows us how much he _cares_ about us…_

“I got the impression, between your journals and some stuff Bill said, that you two… kinda knew each other,” Stan said quietly. “And I wanted to… say I was sorry.”

“What for?” It was a ridiculous reply, because any other day Ford would’ve had no trouble thinking of things he’d like Stan to apologize for — but right now, lost in thought about liars and demons and differences between the two that really should’ve occurred to him sooner, _Stan saying he was sorry_ couldn’t have been further from Ford’s mind.

“For not taking you seriously back in ‘82 when you were acting like people were after you! I thought you’d gone off the deep end, but if I’d known you were dealing with an actual, literal demon…”

“You would’ve taken the journal and left?”

“Fuck no! I would’ve stuck around and punched the _shit_ out of the triangular bastard who put you in that state!”

“Then you would’ve known what I needed better than _I_ did, at that point,” Ford blurted out, surprising even himself. “I should’ve just told you the truth.”

Stan stared at him. “You really mean that?”

“Well, my initial thought was that Bill would’ve been impossible to punch — but you’ve clearly proven you can accomplish that I considered impossible with regards to Bill, rendering that thought null and void, so… yes.” At some point in the conversation, Ford’s voice had involuntarily dropped to a low whisper. “I suppose I do mean that.”

Stan stared at the table in silence for approximately forty-five seconds before replying: “Ford, can we… talk? I don’t want to keep you up all night, but… I’ve got a lot of stuff I need to say, except I hardly know how to phrase any of it, and I just —”

“No, don’t worry about keeping me up. I — I have some thoughts of my own that I should probably… try and articulate.” Ford paused. “You have plenty of coffee in the house, right? For when I inevitably feel exhausted tomorrow despite having work to do?”

“Don’t worry, I got plenty.” Stan chuckled, but it died out quickly. “Ford, I… I know I haven’t exactly acted in a way that’ll make you actually _believe_ this, but I’m so sorry about the science fair. It really was an accident, I _swear_ it was, but — but I should’ve just _told_ you as soon as it happened, instead of making it about that dumb boat —”

“Don’t call the boat dumb,” Ford snapped. “_I_ was the dumb one. I was angry, and I kept being angry for a long time, but I never, _ever_ wanted you to get kicked out — I shouldn’t have made a scene out of yelling at you right where Dad could hear! I knew exactly what he was like about money, I should’ve _known_ what he’d do if he thought you —”

He had to pause to take a breath. Everything he’d said was accurate, despite his attempts to convince himself otherwise for the past forty-odd years, and abandoning that attempt at suppression felt like blowing a hole open in a dam and unleashing a flood that couldn’t be held back.

“That thing you said a few minutes ago, about being nothing but a liar and a cheater — that was something Dad told you when he kicked you out, wasn’t it? Because it’s not true, and it never has been. I need you to know that.”

“What? I — look, I don’t remember what Dad said, but if he _did_ say it, then he was right for once. I could barely make a nickel of profit before I stole your name and your house, and turned your whole _life_ into my biggest scam of all.” His voice cracked. “I appreciate what you’re saying, I really do, but —”

“Are you kidding? You restarted a work of alien engineering for which half the instructions were in code! And without a high school diploma, no less!”

“But you said it yourself, I did almost destroy the universe —”

“Damn it, Stan!” Ford slammed his fists on the table and Stan flinched, causing Ford to shake his head and sigh.

“I’m sorry. I — I just — I was under the impression that you wanted me back in your life. And I want you back in mine, so… will you just let me apologize without insisting that I should _hate_ you for some reason?”

Stan sprung out of his seat, and for a moment Ford thought he was about to storm out of the room, but instead he pulled Ford out of his own seat and trapped him in a hug, burying his face in Ford’s shoulder. 

And after his initial shock wore off, Ford hugged him back.

“I really missed you, Sixer,” Stan whispered.

“I missed you too, knucklehead.” Ford wriggled one arm out of Stan’s embrace to take off his glasses and wipe a tear away from his eye. “I wish I’d realized it earlier.”

Something went _bump_ just outside the door to the kitchen, and Stan and Ford both whirled around.

“Kids, how long have you been listening?!” Stan gasped.

The younger twins stepped out from their hiding places — Dipper somewhat sheepishly, and Mabel without shame.

“Sorry,” Dipper told them, “but you were arguing so loud that we could hear you from the attic, and we got kinda worried —”

“I knew you two would stop being awkward around each other and hug it out sooner or later!” Mabel exclaimed. “And all you needed was to just sit down and _talk_!”

“Shouldn’t you two be in bed?” Ford asked, prompting Stan to gently elbow him in the arm.

“Yeah, like you never stayed up past your bedtime when you were their age.”

“Oh, come on,” Ford replied as he elbowed Stan back, but he was smiling. “You’re well aware that I would stay up to read about science, not eavesdrop!”

Stan got a wistful look in his eyes. “I dunno, I remember a lot more of turning the room into a blanket fort where we could make shadow puppets and tell spooky stories that _definitely_ weren’t educational.”

“Those were simpler times,” Ford admitted. “I’d forgotten how much I missed those nights…”

“That settles it, tonight is sleepover night in the Mystery Shack!” Mabel declared. “Dipper, gather up all the blankets and pillows you can find! Stan, make some popcorn! Ford, I need your help designing the most epic blanket fort to ever loom over our living room!”

“I’m not sure —” Ford began, but Dipper cut him off.

“You’ve just been through a rough few _decades_, Grunkle Ford. You deserve some time to just get comfortable and have fun — and trust me, Mabel knows fun.”

“Well…” _I suppose I’m not falling asleep on my own anytime soon, given how much I have on my mind._ “If that’s what Doctor Mabel prescribed, then I guess I can’t say no, can I?”

***

Ford was the first to fall asleep, leaning on Stan’s shoulder as he began to snore softly, and Stan and Dipper followed soon after. Mabel snapped a picture, unable to resist the temptation to immortalize the goofy looks on her sleeping family’s faces, before draping a sheet over them and snuggling up next to Ford, munching on one last handful of popcorn before finally closing her eyes.

Somewhere buried deep in the forest, a ghost fumed from inside a mirror, and somewhere within the nightmarish dimension between all dimensions, a demon plotted vengeance — but for tonight, at least, the Pines lived in a world of their own, unconcerned with anyone else in the universe except their strange, little, recently expanded family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <s>Ford meeting his great-niblings for the first time and seeing how they love him unconditionally: who are these strange children and why am I physically incapable of saying “no” to them</s>
> 
> But anyways, that’s the end of To See The Unseen! …or is it?
> 
> Well, it’s complicated. I wasn’t initially planning for this to become a long-running AU, only intending it as a roughly four-chapter Halloween special — but as you can guess from the sheer length of this epilogue, I’ve gotten attached to this universe and still have ideas for a lot more things I want to explore.
> 
> The problem is, they’re pretty vague ideas, and I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to developing them. So for now, this fic has reached its (hopefully satisfying) conclusion, but the possibility of a sequel is definitely out there! Maybe I’ll return to it next fall, who knows?
> 
> But anyways, thank you all for the wonderful support and comments, and particular congratulations to the people who predicted things like Nathaniel Northwest’s involvement! Seeing theories, even small ones, about my writing makes me happier than almost anything in the world :D
> 
> [(also on tumblr!)](https://anistarrose.tumblr.com/post/189002000026/to-see-the-unseen-ch-5-gravity-falls)


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